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AN ENCYCLOPEDIA 


ON THE 


EVIDENCES ; 


OR, 

> 

MASTERPIECES 


OF MANY MINDS. 


/ BY 

J-. W. 1* EOTsTSIEJIR,- 



ST. LOUIS: 

JOHN BURNS, Publisher. 
1880. 


IT 



Copyright by John Burns. 


Thb Library 

of Congrrss 

Washington 


LC Control Number 



tmp96 025634 


PREFACE. 



It is perhaps best that a few things should be said before entering 
upon the perusal of this book. Had the author only his own thoughts 
to offer, he would, at least, have chosen some other theme than “ Evi- 
dences. ” As it is, he feels that he can render valuable service to the read- 
er. It had been in his mind for some years to bring together some of the 
conclusions of the vast and wide-spread host who have published con- 
victions upon the themes dealt with here. There seems to be a unity 
of spirit and a bond of peace in the very endeavor. It is delightful to 
cee the conservative and the progressive — the old and the new — clasp 
hands. It is the historic and the prophetic merged and in solution. 
The tone and statement of the Christian argument is in constant 
growth. What was competent to meet the infidelity of Payne’s period 
would, of itself, be futile for the present defence ; though we confess it 
would be both extravagant and untrue to pronounce wholesale con- 
demnation on very much that was wisely written a hundred or more 
years ago. There is an iron strength, as well as a native common sense, 
in the old logic, that needs to be incorporated with the flexible but deli- 
cate forms of current thought. 

Moreover, the testimonise of men, more than ever before, are valued 
mostly for the man that stands behind them, be he preacher, poet, 
philosopher or politician; and, strong as the prejudice against the 
clerical order still remains in the quarters of the skeptic, it seems wise 
to allow large space to the scientific and literary masters, as well as to 
the many true and thoughtful theologians who continue to grace and 
strengthen knowledge, and do honor to mankind. 

We have not scrupled, therefore, to mix our authors up thoroughly. 
Perhaps never before has such a motley crew been brought together for 
such purpose, or indeed for any purpose whatsoever. And this being 
so, we cannot be supposed to endorse every word or thought they 
present. Some are for instruction and others for admonition. Introdu- 
cing them to the reader, courtesy, as well as Christianity, compels us to 
allow them to speak “without being molested or made afraid.” The 
best we could do was to select as wisely as possible. We also hazard 


iv 


PREFACE. 


the reputation that falls to the scrapper ; but we console ourselves with 
the fact that any work at all encyclopedic in its nature involves the 
same risk. At any rate, it has given us some pleasure to contemplate 
the possible breaking-up of some sterile fastnesses. The juxtaposition 
of such thinkers as we produce will tend to fertilize the mind. Their 
very antagonisms of character will secure this. The surprises that will 
burst up in the reader’s mind, as he follows a thinker of whom he had 
formed a peculiarly incorrect estimate, will send a glow to the brain 
and a rapture or pang to the heart. It will also be an effectual preven- 
tive of that narrow stereotypedness one observes in so many public and 
private characters. Led on, in haste, from point to point, by so many 
skilled guides, there will be little danger, in this case, of encrustation 
on the plain, though we should gaze now and then on the Sodom we 
escape from. And, unless we labor under a gross mistake, the harmo- 
nies of evidence here presented to the doubter’s consideration will 
greatly assist in melting down his difficulties. Surely, this legion of 
voices will not appeal to his unstable mind in vain. 

Wherever it has been conveniently possible, we have verified our 
authors. Some, to be sure, having become the common spokesmen of 
mankind, seem to succeed in traveling on, without particular verifica- 
tion, by virtue of their own mighty momentum. We mention this, 
because we intend this volume to be of incalculable service to those who 
appear before the world in the propagation or defence of the truths of 
God, as well as to the secluded reader. Nor have we declined to hope 
that even the ambitious student, the college professor and the scientist 
might find it to their advantage to consult its authorities. 

Above all, we present you a book laden with words of wisdom and 
literary gems — a thesaurus of soul-thoughts, full of vigor and vitality, 
having emanated from the master- thinkers of the world. By freely 
consulting the contents, you will easily get the range of thought so that 
you can find anything rapidly, although we advise that you construct 
your own index, from time to time, as anything especially strikes 
you. A private index is worth six of any other kind, because you thus 
eliminate from the mass what you peed. 

We now send this volume forth, asking for it an honest, searching 
study, and doubting not that God will bless it, in doing a fair share of 
service for mankind and for the truths our very instincts compel us to 
cling to. 


Belton, Mo., Aug. 20th, 1880. 


J. W. MONSER. 


OOlsTTEHsTTS. 


CHAPTER I. 

GOD. 

Pantheism and Atheism Contrasted, Pearson; The Philosophy 
of Spinoza as Productive of much Modern Theorizing, Pearson; 
A Deduction on Thought and The Thinker, Joseph Cook; Per- 
sonality of God Proved from His Superiority, Garbett; A 
Deduction on Mind and Matter, Joseph Cook; Existence of 
God Proved by Existence of Being, Locke; Conclusions 
Drawn from Leibnitz’s Position that there is Being in every 
Thought, Cousin; Analogy between Man’s Soul and the Soul 
of the Universe, Socrates; We should Expect just what we 
see in the Universe, Burr; Existence of Divine Being Inferred 
from Existence of the World, Whewell; The Views of the 
Heathen, Hooker; Intellectual Nature of Creator the Basis of 
all Reasonings, Hugh Miller ; All Dark without God, Theodore 
Parker; A Cause for Uniformity in Nature, Hitchcock; Laws 
suppose Agents, Whewell; The Nature of the All-Ruling 
Power, Bowne ; Tables Turned Concerning our Reaching the 
Infinite, Bowne; The First Cause and the Absolute, Mivart; 
What the Principle of Causation Requires, McCosh ; What our 
Instincts Reach out for, Mansel ; Descartes’ Axiom ; Bentley 
on Successive Duration ; Sir Thomas Browne on God as the 
Soul of Causality ; Rousseau’s Beacon ; Sir Walter Raleigh’s 
Logical Process; God in His Threefold Attitude, A. Campbell; 
Likeness of Divine and Human Attributes, Christopher ; Shall 
we say It or He? Robertson; The Whence and the Whither, 
Burr; Anthropomorphism Analyzed, Braden; God Can be 
Known, John James Tayler; The History of Anthropomorph- 
ism, J. J. Tayler ; The Error of Anthropomorphism, Beecher ; 
Jesus Teaches to Infer the Nature of God, Beecher; No 
Antagonism between the Laws and the Will of God, Dr. Car- 
penter; Human Fathers and the Divine Father Similar, Dr, 


vi 


CONTENTS. 


Carpenter; Divine Attributes all Woven Together, Martineau; 
Grand Displays of the Divine Power, Charnock; God Pene- 
trates All Things, Channing; God Constantly Active and 
Flexible to Nature and Man, Bushnell ; Splendid Paragraph on 
the Helplessness of a Mechanical God, Bushnell ; The Divine 
Personality the Chief Revelation, Dr. Parker ; I Know that my 
Redeemer Liveth, Robertson. - - - 20-51 

CHAPTER II. 

CREATION. 

Questions Concerning Creation, Boardman ; An Exegesis on 
Genesis i : 1, Dr. Murphy; Exegesis on Process of Creation, Mur- 
phy; How Moses Contemplates the Creation, Murphy ; Funda- 
mental Ideas of Creation, Tayler Lewis ; An Exegesis Develop- 
ing the “ Twenty-four Hour Theory,” Murphy ; The “ Period” 
Theory, Tayler Lewis ; Proofs of Genesis in the Rocks, Dawson ; 
Eye-witness the Source of History, Kurtz ; What the Creation 
Hypothesis Implies, Dawson; Physical Structures Indicative 
of Creative Ideas, Agassiz; Gravitation, Heat, etc., Energies 
of Intelligent Will, Winchell ; Max Miller’s Criticism on 
Transfer of Modern Words and Thoughts to Moses’ Day, J. P* 
Thompson; Science Proves Mosaic Record True and Pro- 
nounces it Divine, Guyot ; How the Creation takes its Place in 
Classes and Orders, Dana; Harmony of the Two Records, 
Hugh Miller; Beauty and Sublimity of Mosaic Statements — 
Longinus’ Eulogy, Dr. Mcllvaine; Bentley on the Eternal 
Sterility ; Man’s Creation Contrasted with the Animals, Hall 
Whatever the Method, Creation Still, Argyll ; Creation Ac- 
cording to Patterns, Owen; Nature of Divine and Human Mind 
Similar, Whewell ; To Disprove Creation is to Disprove Chris- 
tianity, Mivart; What the Word Creation now Means to Us, 
Procter; Joseph Henry on “Chance” and “Mind;” Existence 
Exempt from Creator Absurd, Cuvier; Creation now Viewed 
as an Evolving, Bowne ; Augustine Inquires of the Creation 
Concerning God; O. M. Mitchell’s Idea of Creation; Moses 
and Astronomy and Geology Compared, MeCaul ; Agassiz on 
the Mistakes Concerning the Production of Created Beings; 
Socrates’ Youthful Conception of the “Genesis;” Mosaic and 
Geological Days in Harmony, J. P. Thompson ; Scripture does 


CONTENTS. 


Yli 

not Oppose Science, Pye Smith; The Periodic Order in the 
Ascending Scale, Dr. J. P. Lange ; Aristotle’s Hidden Beings 
Pronouncing upon Creation; Isaac Newton’s Conclusion; Cole- 
ridge on the Bees and Ants Foreshadowing Humanity ; Bible 
Bevelations of Links in the Material Chain, Dr. Crosby ; The 
Uses of Creation, Bowne. .... 52-93 

. CHAPTER III. 

DESIGN. 

Editorial Remark ; The Atomic Theory Examined and 
Thoroughly Refuted, Bowne ; Socrates on the Design of the 
Eye, Teeth, etc.; Paley’s Great Argument on the Watch; 
Dawson’s Criticism on Huxley’s Review of Paley, together 
with a Defence of Paley; Blackie’s Defence of Paley and 
Views of Design; How We Rise from the Facts about Us to 
a Belief in God, McCosh; Dr. Holmes on Design and Paley’s 
Reasoning ; Power, Force and Law, Holmes ; Contrivance or 
Purpose in Nature, Argyll; Darwin’s Theory Criticised, 
Argyll ; “ Silent Members ” in Creation and their Significance, 
Argyll; Limbs, etc., Developed by Use, Argyll; Mere Orna- 
ments in Birds, etc., no Benefit in Struggle for Existence, 
Argyll ; Great Variety of Proofs of Design in Nature, WheweK ; 
Fallacy in Assuming that Natural Selection is a Cause, Win- 
chell; Physicists Vainly Ticketing Nature, Braden; Prof. 
Stirling on Protoplasm ; Several Assumptions of Evolution- 
ists, Dawson ; Argument for Design Lost Sight of, Sir William 
Thomson ; Agassiz on Mind. Creation, Eggs, etc.; Hugh Mil- 
ler’s Defence of Paley and Chalmers as Respects Design; 
Lecky’s Rebuke Concerning Evolution ; Prof. Gray’s Conces- 
sions Concerning Evolution; Darwin’s Admissions; Vogt’s 
Criticism from his own Evolutionary View-Point ; Haeckel also 
puts Darwin’s Theory in the True Light; Tyndall finds Fatal 
Faults with Evolution ; Agassiz’s Conclusions upon it ; Carlyle’s 
Sarcastic Voice. - - - 94-141 


CHAPTER IV. 

SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 

Editorial comment; Winched on “Conflict:” its Plilosophy 


CONTENTS. 


viii 

and Value as a Culture ; Reasons for the “ Conflict,” Winchell ; 
Do the Scriptures Shackle the Intellect? The Church and 
Science: Dr. Draper on the “Conflict ;” The Workings of Dog- 
matism and Rationalism, Mansel ; The Methods of Science and 
the Bible, and their Adaptations, Dawson ; Tyndall’s Criticism 
on Buckle’s Attempt to Detach Intellectuality from Moral 
Force ; What the Life and Death of Thought and Faith Depend 
on, Guyot; McCosh’s Celebrated Eulogy on the Harmony, of 
Science and Religion ; Herbert Spencer’s Theory of the Recon- 
ciliation ; Lecky’s Careful Criticism Concerning the Material 
istic Influence upon Religious Thought ; Who is it that Closes 
His Eyes? Hitchcock; Does the Study of Natural Science 
Lead to Infidelity ? Chalmers ; Herschel on the Same ; Men of 
one Idea apt to be Biased, Sedgwick ; Can we be Content to 
Remain in the Dark ? Ruskin ; Hugh Miller’s Criticism on La 
Place ; Why Modern Science Clashes with Religion, Pressense ; 
The Parley between Men of Science and Men of Religion, 
Argyll ; The Solution Lies in Human Life, Beecher ; Duty of 
Science to Respect the Religious Sentiments, Dawson; The 
Rights and Limits of Science, Peabody ; Spencer on the Anti- 
Theological Bias ; The Epithet of a Secular ” Grudged to Any- 
thing Whatever, Kingsley; What is it Bankrupts Nature? 
Le Conte ; Final Causes do not Disappear at the Advance of 
Science, Le Conte : Can Religion and Science March in Har- 
mony? Galton; From What Quarter of the Educated World 
have the Main Discoveries Come ? Crosby ; Religion and 
Science, and Bible and Science, Different Terms, Crosby ; 
Illiberalism should be Properly Credited, Christlieb ; A Sharp 
Line to be Drawn, Christlieb ; Sectarianism Unlovely, Flint. 

[142-174 

CHAPTER V. 

MIRACLES. 

An Examination of the Personal and Philosophical Reasons 
for Rejecting Miracles, Mozley; An Ascension of the Scale of 
Causation, and its Limits, Chalmers ; A Full Explanation of the 
Nature of a Miracle, Trench ; A Criticism on Views of Nature 
and the Supernatural, Tayler Lewis ; A Supernatural Agency 
Admissible, Bushnell ; Sin, itself Unnatural, Demands the Mir- 
acle to Crush it, Bushnell ; Our Lord’s Miracles Defended 


CONTENTS. 


ix 


against Modern Criticism, Liddon ; Bidiculous Interpretations 
of Biblical Miracles ; Mythical Theories ; How Shall we Dis- 
tinguish between the Husk and Kernel of Narrative, etc., 
Christlieb ; Wrong to Conclude, Concerning Miracles, from 
Subjective Considerations, Fisher; The Length which Froude 
thinks Benan must go to be Logical ; Barnes on Witchcraft, 
Necromancy, and other Superstitions — a very able extract. 

[175-227 

CHAPTER YI. 

PROVIDENCE. 

A Bemarkably Fine Comparison of Nature, as Fixed and 
Flexible, by McCosh ; Do Prayer and its Answer form a Sepa- 
rate Part of Nature? McCosh; The Fortuities of Life, Moral 
Exercise, Prayer, the Unexpected Events of Life, Isaac Taylor ; 
A London Editor’s Beply to Tyndall on Prayer; False Yiews 
of Providence drive one into Atheism, Dr. Holland; A Bespon- 
sive Touch at God’s End of the Chain of Causes Answers 
Prayer, Chalmers ; Providence Exemplified in Biblical Charac- 
ters, Errett; Mansel on the World as a Machine, and God as a 
Mechanic; False Analogies Drawn from Human and Brute 
Nature, Mansel; What Kind of a God the Material Philosopher 
Wants, Mansel; God Bevealed as the Father of Comforts, 
Beecher ; Life in its Various Exits and Entrances, J. J. Tayler ; 
The Minutite on which God’s Providence Bests, Charnock ; 
Sir Thomas Browne’s Ideas ; Cowper’s Creed; What is Enough 
for a Christian, Montaigne ; God’s Attributes and their Opera- 
tions Explained, A. B. Jones; Principal Dawson on Providence 
and Prayer; The Nature of a Moral Government, Whewell; 
Lord Bacon on Prosperity and Adversity; Erskine’s Convic- 
tions; What Providence is, Baleigh ; Whittier‘s Poetic Concep- 
tion; A “ Titanic” Conception of Bichter’s ; Jupiter’s Chair, 
Hale; The Divine Inspection, Bentley; Bectification of Pro- 
miscuous Good and Evil, Addison; What our Existence 
Depends on, Wayland. - 228-256 

CHAPTEB VII. 

MORAL EVIL. 

The Question Defined, Dewey; A Philosophic view of the 


X 


CONTENTS. 


Environment Surrounding God in the Creation of Man, 
Christopher; Natural and Moral Evil — Pain — the Pessimist 
View — Mill’s Position Reviewed, Bowne ; God does not Inspire 
nor Necessitate Man to Sin — A Yiew of the Tree of Knowl- 
edge, etc. — The Serpent, Charnock ; Murphy’s Exegesis of the 
Tree, and the Eating the Forbidden Fruit ; God Justified in 
Permitting the Temptation, Murphy; Lange’s Yiew of the 
Temptation ; Beecher’s Masterly Analysis of Temptation ; 
Freeman Clarke’s Idea of the Fall ; Guthrie on Temptation ; 
Man Fallen and Debased, Pressense ; The Temptation Genuine 
and Historic, Errett and Auberlen ; The Fall Involves no Loss 
of Faculties nor Addition of Passions, Errett; The Nature of 
Sin, Robertson; Milton on Knowledge of Good and Evil; We 
are Made for Discipline and Preparation, Taylor; Government 
of God not a Police, but a Providence, Dewey; Salvation 
Gradual and Suited to the Developing Mind, Errett; Yarious 
Influences of Sin, A. Campbell ; What Sin is in its True Sense, 
Channing; A Fearful Picture of a Ruined Soul, Bushnell; 
What Sin Tends to, Watts; A Poetic Creation of Jeremy 
Taylor’s; Robert Southey’s Yiew of Moral Evil; How to 
Endure Evil, Addison; Sin Grows Stronger by Practice, 
Sir T. Browne ; How to Retaliate on Sin, Baxter ; Richter’s 
Remarkable Metaphor; South’s Idea; Longfellow’s Stanza; 
Talmage’s Brilliant Rhetoric; The Fatal Wound of Human 
Nature, Leathes. - 257-2 85 


CHAPTER Y 1 1 1. 

MAN. 

Man’s Place in Physical Nature, and Nature’s Supplies for 
Him, Dana; Quatrefages’ Man’s Characteristics; Differences 
between Monkeys and Men, Agassiz; Argyll’s Yiews on the 
Same ; Man not of Nature, Marsh; Man a Microcosm of Matter 
and Mind, Dawson ; A Thorough Criticism of Darwin’s Idea, 
by Richard Holt Hutton; Our Moral Nature not a Mere Delu- 
sion, Dr. Carpenter; Human Thought and Life Greater than 
that of the Animal, Thompson; Resemblances between Man 
and Apes only Superficial, Thompson; The Origin of Man — 
The lesson we Gather about Him from Nature, Mivart; The 
Compound Nature of Man: His Home Qualities, His Primitive 


CONTENTS. 


xi 


Happiness, Errett; We are Feudal Servants, Tholuck ; Cice- 
ro’s Figure ; u Man is but a Feed,” Pascal ; Dangerous to Show 
Man His Meanness Without His Greatness, Pascal; The 
Essence of Our Being, Carlyle; Emerson’s Notion; Man’s 
Insect Anxieties and Giant Projects, Schiller ; Who Lives 
Most? Bailey; Nature Putting on Perpetual Masks, Goethe; 
What is Man’s Chief Good? Shakspeare; How Man is Free, 
Eichter; Man’s Use and Function, Euskin; What Nature gets 
out of Us, Holmes; Our Brains Seventy-year Clocks, Holmes; 
Who shall be Yicar of Bowden? Holland; Sterne on the 
Mockeries of Conscience; Milton’s Conception of the Wise 
Man; Man’s Estimate of Himself at Different Ages, Young; 
Is Vain Man the Principal Part of God’s Works? Wordsworth 
on the Etherial Hopes of Man; South on the Morose Sponge; 
Hugo’s Description of Hypocrisy; Pollock’s Description of 
Same ; Byron’s Conception of Man ; Baxter’s Eipest Thought 
of Man as Good; Penn’s Stroke at the Eoyalty Idea; What a True 
Love of Humanity Embraces, Cousin ; Plato’s Idea of What 
our Mortal Nature Seeks for; Daniel Webster on the Human 
Eelation ships ; Men who have no Desire to Eisk Anything for 
the Advancement of Truth, Mozley; Goethe’s Eeprobation of 
the Man who Lives at Eandom, Blackie ; Lowell’s Ideal and 
Irresolute Man; A Matter-of-Fact Man, Dickens; Human 
Ogres, Thackeray ; A Thankful Glutton, Lamb ; A Passion-burnt 
Man, Montaigne; Foster’s Firm Man; Seneca on Keeping 
Guard Over Oneself; Eobertson’s Figure, Showing how Men 
let Time Slip through their Hands ; How Strong Men are 
Unnerved by Trifles ; Channing’s Hope of the Multitude ; What 
Man was Framed for, Tayler ; The Dynasty of the Future to 
have Glorified Man as its Inhabitant, Miller. - - 286-315 

CHAPTEE IX. 

THE BIBLE. 

Is the Purely Organic Theory of Inspiration a Sound One? 
Westcott; The True Idea of Inspiration Offers no Extraordinary 
Difficulties, Westcott; How to Eemove the Objections to In- 
spiration and take Sure Foothold, E. H. Browne; Practical 
Eeligion does not Eequire the Genetic Conception of Truth, 
Neander; Parker’s Pregnant Thoughts on how Inspiration 


lii 


CONTENTS, 


Grows on One ; Freeman Clarke says lie who has been where 
he has not, is Competent to Guide Him ; Lange on the Unity 
and Life of Scripture; The Bible as a Book of Growth, Mur- 
phy; Adolphe Monod sums up the Popular Objections to 
Inspiration, and Shows how Christ would Meet Them ; Buie of 
Human Conduct Graduated to Man’s Knowledge and Ability, 
Haley; The Purpose of God in the Former Times is Ascer- 
tained from the End Achieved, Mozley ; The History of the 
Biblical Characters is as Checkered and Fragmentary as the 
Human Life Behind Them, Bogers ; Pagan Accounts of the 
Flood, Curtis ; Could the Ark Hold all the Animals and their 
Provisions f Dungan ; Bapid Multiplication of Israelites, J ohn- 
son; The Ten Plagues: Their Significance, Order, Duration 
and the Evidences of Them; Proofs that Deuteronomy is an 
Ancient Work, Milman; Espin, Ewald, Arnold and Stanley on 
the Destruction of Canaanites ; Alleged Wrongs and Immor- 
alities of Bible Considered, Stowe ; Bichardson on Partyism 
Corrupting the Text and Spirit of Scripture ; Points of Objec- 
tional Lodgment to be Expected on so Broad a Surface as the 
Bible, Isaac Taylor; Pascal says there is Light Enough; Does 
any one Question Ancient Journals of the Lords and Commons 
of England? Watson; Prof. Bawlinson on the Buies by which 
we Beceive the Scriptures, and Objections to them; He is 
Satisfied with the Biblical Argument as it Stands, Enforced as 
it is by the Annals of Other Nations ; Bogers’ Satire on that 
Conceit that Presumes to Enlighten the Jews Bespecting their 
Past History; An Answer to the Statement that the Bible is a 
Book of “ Shreds and Patches,” Bogers ; Absurdities Involved 
in the Idea that Prophecy is Incredible, Bogers; Mozley’s 
Poetic Strain on the Nature of Prophecy; A Delineation of 
the Prophetic Spirit and Function, Stanley ; The Characteris- 
tics of the Hebrew Prophets, Beecher; John Stuart Mills’ 
Honest Utterance as to their Superiority over all other Proph- 
ets ; Volney’s Writings put Parallel with the Old Testament 
Prophets; Isaiah’s Declarations Concerning the Messiah not 
Singed, Though Passed Through the Fire of Modern Criticism, 
McCaul; Daniel’s Messiah Equally Safe, W. H. Green; Green- 
leaf’s Appeal to the Lawyers for a Fair Examination of Chris- 
tianity-; His Legal Statements as to the Genuineness of the 
Gospels; Critical Questions now Turn to the Life and Biog- 
raphies of Christas History, not Myths and Legends, McCosh; 


CONTENTS. 


xiii 


Matthew Arnold is Doubtful of Baur’s Teachings, and also of 
those of other German Critics; Arnold’s Examination of the 
Authenticity of the Four Gospels, their Origins and Credentials, 
with His Vindication of the u Fragment of Muratori ;” The 
Muratori Fragment Itself, with Critical Notes Accompanying 
it; The Historical Argument for the Gospels in a Nutshell, 
Leonard Bacon ; The Scriptures could not well be Corrupted 
by Translators and Transcribers, Norton ; Celsus’ Quotations 
of the New Testament, as Compiled from Origin by Doddridge; 
In what Language was Matthew’s Gospel First Written? 
Westcott; Froude’s Opinion of This; Norton’s Decision Be- 
specting it; G. P. Fisher’s Views of it ; Proofs of Antiquity of 
John’s Gospel Drawn from Last Chapter, Westcott; James An- 
thony Froude says the Proofs for Authenticity of John’s Gospel 
are Overwhelming; So says Norton; Trench’s Bemarks as to the 
Individualities of each Gospel ; His Contrast between the Paul- 
ine and Johannine Ideas of Man; Irenseus’ Epistle to Florinus; 
Fisher’s Criticism of the Epistle; The Gospel of John too 
Full of Love and Purity to be Spurious, Fisher; John Brings 
out Conceptions of Truth the Other Evangelists Pass Over, 
Longan; SchafPs Eulogy of John’s Gospel; Schliermacher’s 
Avowal of the Apostolicity of John’s Gospel; Westcott’s 
Beautiful Amplification on the Uses of the Four Gospels in 
Bringing out the Elements of our Lord’s Person and Life ; A 
Very Full and Becent Statement by Prof. Peabody Bespecting 
Adverse Criticisms of the Gospels and their Futility — His 
Magnificent Peroration on the Character and Propagation of 
the Gospel ; How the Credibility Argument Moves on Step by 
Step, Chalmers ; Hackett’s Seasons for Believing the Acts of 
Apostles Authentic ; Canon Farrar Admits Baur’s Power as a 
Critic, but gives his Seasons for Dissenting from his Opinions ; 
Christianity According to Tubingen School, Christlieb ; Why 
Baur and his School Discriminate between Peter and Paul — 
Their Theory, Christlieb ; Bernard Eulogizes Luke’s Gifts as 
the Historian of the Acts of the Apostles ; Teaching of Acts, 
McGarvey; Chalmers on the New Testament as a Whole; 
George Campbell on Difference between Old and New Testa- 
ment Prophets; A. Campbell on How to Prove the New 
Testament Divine ; His Views on External and Internal Evi- 
dence ; McKnight on the Original Manuscripts ; Paley on the 
Inability to Counterfeit Paul’s Epistles; Westcott on the 


XiV 


CONTENTS. 


Seven Disputed Books ; Alexander on the Seven Last Epistles 
and Revelation; The Upshot of Infidel Industry in Searching 
for Defects in the Canon, Isaac Taylor ; Huxley’s Eulogy on 
the Bible ; What Remains when you Strike the Bible Down ? 
What it has Wrestled with, and what it has Done to Improve 
Mankind, Magill ; One of Talmage’s Finest Passages; Joseph 
Parker says the Bible is a Perpetual Resource and Mystery ; 
Beecher Declares it to be a Book of Joy; Edward Everett 
Shows what would Fall with the Bible’s Fall ; Theodore Parker’s 
Passage, as Quoted by Henry Rogers ; Testimonies from 
Bancroft, Whipple, Janes, John Q. Adams, Washington, Jack- 
son, Harrison, Franklin, Samuel Adams in a Letter to Paine, 
Rush, Joy, Clay, Webster, Grant, Scott, Henry, John Adams, 
Goethe, Newton, Locke, Coleridge, Carlyle, Rousseau, Theodore 
Parker, Victoria. Jefferson, Kent, Burke, Seward, Bunsen, 
Tischendorf, Diderot. .. . . 316-448 


CHAPTER X. 

INFIDELITY. 

The Situation Surveyed, Pearson ; To what shall we Attrib- 
ute the Desire to Destroy a Man’s Faith, Watson ; The Forms 
Infidelity Manifests Itself in, Pearson ; What is the Spectre 
from which Men are Flying, Maurice ; A View of Some of the 
Minds the History of Modern Doubt has Disclosed, A. S. Far- 
rar ; Cardinal Causes in the Church for Infidelity, Christlieb ; 
The Complexion of Skeptical Minds, Wilson ; How Rousseau 
Found it in his Companions ; To Doubt is not to do Evil, Rob- 
ertson; Life Itself is a School of Doubt; We but Journey 
Towards Truth, Bushnell ; Plenty of Proofs, but too Indolent 
to Use Them, Locke; The Temptations to become Skeptics, 
Addison; What Good do Infidels Propose, Steele; No Philo- 
sophical, Rational or Logical Argument Against Christianity, 
Campbell ; The Prospects of the Infidel, Thomas Moore ; What 
is Atheism ? Blackie; Foster’s Reductio ad Absurdum of the 
Idea that there is no God in the Universe ; Braden’s Review 
of Underwood’s Leading Points; David Swing’s Exhaustive 
Review of Ingersoll and His Ideas ; Power’s Examination of 
“ Hardness of Heart,” Polygamy, Slavery, The Mosaic Dispen- 
sation, Barbarities, Marriage, etc., as Caricatured by Ingersoll ; 


CONTENTS. 


XV 


Dr. Ryder’s Specifications Against Ingersoll; On the Sun 
Standing Still, Braden ; Curtis on the Fertility of Palestine ; 
Curtis on Increase of Children of Israel ; Curtis on Polygamy ; 
Arthur Swazey’s Valuable Seed - Thoughts ; Dr. Gibson’s 
Critical Observations Concerning Ingersoll’s Unfairness ; The 
Globe- Democrat’s Editorial on Ingersollism ; Benjamin Frank- 
lin’s Appeal to the Constitutional Convention to Resume 
Prayer ; Gibbon on Primitive Marriages : Their Inequalities for 
Women — He Criticises the Applause which has been Lavished 
upon the Romans Respecting the Abstinence from Divorce ; 
Christianity Declared Itself Against Promiscuous Marriages, 
Lecky ; A Dangerously Close Picture of Some One, Carlyle ; 
Bowne’s Satire on what the Infidel Suffers for the Truth’s 
Sake ; Never been a State of Atheists, Plutarch ; Firm Believers 
have the Advantage, Byron ; The Infidel Chesterfield’s Opinion 
of the Merits of Religion; Burke’s Denunciation of Infidels; 
Bacon’s Essay on Atheism; Charnock on the Skill of the 
Contriver ; An Infidel Measured by his own Tape, Collier ; 
Hall’s Terrible Definition of Atheism ; What Atheism Submits 
for Consideration, Theodore Parker ; Religion Expresses some 
Eternal Fact, so says Herbert Spencer; Hume, Lange, New- 
ton and Boyle’s Opinions of God, as Quoted by Tyndall; 
Tyndall’s Personal Struggle in this Matter; Carlyle and 
Richter on Infidelity ; Tyndall’s Yearning Questions Submitted 
to the Test of Ingersoll’s Sentiments, as Expressed in his 
Funeral Oration over his Brother’s Remains ; Huxley Cannot 
Honestly say He is an Atheist ; Spencer Declares for an Inscru- 
table Power ; Pascal’s Famous Dirge on the Limitations of 
Man ; Max Muller says Man Yearns for a Guide ; Benjamin 
Franklin on the Mission of Infidels ; The Stock Criticisms of 
Village Critics, Patterson ; What Attempting to Discriminate 
between the Morality of the Scriptures and their Historic 
Surroundings Involves one in, Patterson ; Some of the Absurd 
Interpretations of Scripture given by Infidels and Liberals, 
Patterson; Rousseau’s Counsel to the World; Barker’s to the 
Young Men. ----- 449-501 


CHAPTER XI. 

CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 

The Childhood of Jesus, Farrar ; The Condition of the Jews 


XVI 


CONTENTS. 


at Jesus' Coming, Andrews; Napoleon’s Speech at St. Helena, 
in full; Rousseau’s Confession of Christ’s Superiority; The 
Infidel Chubb’s Testimony; Renan on the Kingdom of Christ; 
He Shows how Christ Purchased the World’s Immortality; 
Also how He was Related to God; He Shows that Jesus’ 
Idealism was of Yast Service; Jesus Never to be Surpassed, 
Renan; The Things Jesus Convinced the People of, Ecce 
Homo; Channing’s Pen Portrait of Jesus; Pressense’s De- 
scription of Difficulties where One Supposes Jesus’ Biography 
the Result of Philosophic Minds; Christ’s Claims so High that 
He must Sustain them Throughout, Parker; How Scholars 
Attempt to Suppress the Supernatural in Jesus’ Life, and the 
Consequences they Involve Themselves in, Guizot; Barnes 
gives a Summary of the Task the Infidel Imposes on Himself 
who Denies the Realities of the Life and Death of Jesus; 
Bushnell Dwells on the Transcendent Pretensions of Jesus; 
Christlieb Considers the Possibility of the Formation of 
Myths; Strauss’ Wonderful Concession as Respects the Emi- 
nence of Jesus; Theodore Parker even Excels Strauss; Ne- 
ander says Jesus’ Life Presents an Unattainable Height; Rich- 
ter’s View ; Macaulay’s View ; Carlyle’s View ; Addison’s View ; 
Burke’s View ; Steele’s View ; Goethe’s View; Frances Power 
Cobbe’s View; Pecaut’s View; Josephus’ Statement of Jesus, 
and its Confirmation by Burton, Paley and Rawlinson ; What a 
Heathen Oracle said of Christ; Julian’s Testimony; Tacitus’ 
Testimony; Pliny’s Testimony; The Paucity of Jesus’ Plans 
and Machinery, Young; What He Would Have Done Had He 
Been Merely a Great Man, Liddon; The New Test of Virtue, 
as Explained by Seeley in Ecce Homo ; J. B. Walker Thinks that 
it Would have Made Against the Poor and Needy, had Jesus 
Adopted the Jewish Notions of Messiahship; Rudolph Kogel 
Puts Some Vivid Contrasts Before Us; “A Graduate’s” Idea 
of the Power Which the Humanity of Christ has Exercised 
Upon the World, Contrasted with Scholastic Conceptions of 
His Divinity ; The Effect of Christ’s Miracles Upon Those 
About Him, Geikie; What Christ Can Do if You Put Him in 
Your Temple, Proctor ; Hughes’ Conception of the Manliness 
of Christ; What Jesus Did that He Might Win All, Geikie; 
The Incarnation was a Revelation of the True Man as Well as 
the True God, Goodwin; Jesus Tempted to Satisfy Hunger, 
Farrar; Jesus Was no Experimenter, Correcting and Blotting 


/ 


CONTENTS. 


XVII 


Out, Hanna; What Jesus Might Have Been and Done had He 
Conciliated the Pharisees, Robertson; Krummacher on the 
Service Rendered by Christ’s Temptation ; Max Muller’s Most 
Modern Thought on the Superiority of Christ’s Religion to All 
Others; Julius Muller says the Principles of Christ Present us 
with Sure Poothold; Jesus as an Exemplifier of Truth, 
Hyacinthe; Christ is Everything, Talmage ; Progression of 
Christianity, Hinsdale ; A Comparison between J esus’ Teach- 
ing and the Scribes, Farrar ; Methods Adopted by Jesus to 
Popularize His Instructions, Pressense; Wondrous Character- 
istics both in the Man and Teacher, Bushnell; In How Many 
Senses Jesus Disappoints his Hearers, Bushnell; His Descrip- 
tion of the Kingdom of Heaven wholly Unexpected to Jews, 
Channing; What the Sermon on the Mount is, is not, and 
What it Leads to, Beecher; Christ’s Sole Object to Plant 
Fundamental Truths in Human Consciousness, Neander ; What 
in His Vast Wisdom He Could have Done, Contrasted With 
What He Did do, Harris ; Wherein He Differed from Solon, Bias 
or Confucius as a Moralist, Locke ; Christianity the Main Source, 
of the Moral Development of Europe, Lecky ; Christianity Never 
More Powerful than Now, Lecky; Nothing More Erroneous 
than that Christianity has Nothing Peculiar to Itself, Lecky ; 
The History of Self-Sacrifice Mainly the History of Chris- 
tianity, Lecky ; Christianity True to the Moral Sentiments of 
Mankind, Lecky; Christianity the Only True Civilization — A 
Comparison with Arts, Sciences, Commerce and Education, 
Seelye ; A Fine Summary of the Practical Results of Chris- 
tianity in Equalizing and Fraternizing Mankind, Brooke; 
Christianity and Materialism Contrasted, Braden ; Rogers Does 
not Know why Infidels such as Bolingbroke, Paine, etc., are 
More Worthy of Credence than Butler, Pascal and Locke ; 
An Analysis as to whether Christianity is True or False, by 
Norton; The Power of Christianity upon the Churches, Farrar ; 
An Application of “ By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them ” is 
a Successful Test of Christianity, Schaff; Christianity the 
Image of Truth in its Full Proportions, Conybeare and How- 
son ; A Decisive Contrast between Christianity and all other 
Religions, Seelye ; A Fine Amplification of “ Blessed are the 
Poor in Spirit,” by Soame Jenyns ; What Christianity Does for 
Woman, Campbell; Consciousness of Sin Runs Like a Thread 
Throughout Christianity, Alexander ; The Genius of Christianity 

B 


xviii 


CONTENTS. 


is Love, Campbell ; What that Love did in the Early Ages, Eob- 
ertson; The Superiority of Love to all Other Eaculties, 
Beecher. ------ 502-575 


CHAPTEE XII. 

IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 

The Perplexities that are Incident to the Idea of the Soul’s 
Immortality, Jowett; A History of the Development of that 
Idea, Gibbon ; Prof. Blackie Shows that Anciently there were 
but Dim Conceptions of Immortality in the Mind; Westcott 
Adds to this a Summary of the Contradictions Involved, 
Shows what Facts are Demanded to Satisfy the Investigation, 
and that the Eesurrection Supplies these ; Christlieb Examines 
the Tubingen School as Eespects the Mythical Explanations of 
the Eesurrection of Christ ; Horne Deals with the Question, 
“ How Did His Body get Away from the Grave ?” Paul’s Posi- 
tion in the Athenian Sermon as Eespects Christ’s Eisen Body 
— The Views Held by Them, and how He met Them, Errett ; 
What the Eesurrection is, and What it Does, Westcott; 
Perowne shows How the Dead are Eaised, and With What 
Body They Come; Joseph Cook Dissects the Body in Order 
to Illustrate his Point — He Discourses on Butterflies, 
Bioplasts, etc.; Boardman Discourses on the Difference 
between the Psychical and Pneumatic ; The Complacency with 
which Philosophers Speak of the Prospect of Annihilation — 
Dying for Humanity’s Sake, etc., Goldwin Smith ; Man will 
Look Before and After: He will Inquire Concerning Futurity, 
and will not Content Himself in the Fallacy that Organized 
Matter is the Ultimate Goal of Progress, Goldwin Smith ; Why 
Should Scientists Attribute such Wonderful Properties as 
Omniscience and Omnipotence to Matter until they come to 
Contemplate Man, and then Fear to Apply these to Him? 
Bowne; Materialistic Principles do away with Man’s Immor- 
tality, Christlieb ; A Full Eeview of the Arguments Opposed to 
the Soul’s Immortality, Alger ; Dr. Carpenter Denies that Man 
is a mere Thinking- Machine, and shows what False Conclusions 
come from the Notion; Does Death End All? Cook; If the 
Soul be Immortal, it Eequires to be Cultivated, Socrates ; We 
Know Enough to Hope for Immortality, Sir Humphrey Davy ; 


CONTENTS. 


XIX 


A Proof for Immortality in the Fact that we Feel that our Best 
Work is Far Short of what it Should be, Emerson; Addison’s 
Views as Exemplified in his “ Cato ;” We may as well Suppose 
that God Made Eyes without Light as Desires without Fulfil- 
ment, Sherlock. - 576-625 


CHAPTER XIII. 

RETRIBUTION. 

What has given Rise to a Change of Views Respecting Hell ? 
Robertson ; A Curious Inquiry about “ Flame ” — What it 
Means, Arnot ; Chalmers’ Ideas of Hell, the Retributive Con- 
sciousness of Man, etc.; The Justice of God as Respects Pun- 
ishment, Crosby; Reasonableness of Man’s Doom, Vandyke; 
A Scar Never Grows Out, Cook; Can a Man Die a Murderer, 
and yet Come Out Right in the End? Cook; The Marble 
Staircase and the Red-hot Iron Staircase, Cook ; The Pain of 
the Soul Greater than that of the Body, Towne ; Conditions and 
Surroundings of the Impenitent Dead, Townsend ; Dr. Bartol’s 
Ideas of Hell; A Leading Philanthropist says some Natures 
are Beyond the Reach of Moral Influence ; The Gospel may 
become a Savor of Death unto Death ; What the Last Results 
of Punishment may Bring One to ; Eating the Fruit of One’s 
Own Ways, Arnot ; Sowing and Reaping, Robertson ; The True 
Meaning of Hell, Alger ; Byron’s Utterance; “Me Miserable,” 
Milton; A Sense of Duty Follows Us, Webster. ■ 626-652 





















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GOD 


THEISM and Pantheism Contrasted.— Atheism is the ultimate 
point to which pantheism tends. Both may be said to lie in 
the same plane. But the one is not to be confounded with the 
other. The atheist denies the primal truth that God is. The 
pantheist, on the other hand, admits it. It is in fact with him the 
sum and substance of all truth, or rather the one great truth 
in the universe. The atheist sees God nowhere, the pantheist 
sees Him everywhere. The one looks upon a world won- 
drously fair and sublime, every department of which is bright 
with intelligence, and resolves the whole into mere mechanical 
forces, and thrusts out, by a denial of his being, the all-perva- 
ding energy of Nature’s God. The other sees God really 
shining in the sun, moon and stars, living in the flowers and the 
grass of the field : hears Him speaking in the winds and waters, 
in the songs of the birds of the grove, and in the deep emotions 
of the human soul. The atheist looks up to the bright heavens 
and around on the variegated earth, and coolly says : “ There is 
nature, but no God.” The pantheist points to all the glorious 
forms of earth and sky, and exclaims, with something like enthu- 
siasm, “ There is God.” The Divine Being is, with him, indeed, 
the only real existence. The universe, with its multitudinous 
forms of what we call matter and mind, is only phenomenal. 
Men who have not reached the utmost bound of infidelity — 
atheism, or who have not come so far within sight of it as 
pantheism, conceive of the Creator as entirely distinct from 
His works, though incomprehensibly present with and pervading 
them. But the pantheist virtually makes of the twain one. 
Nature is absorbed in Deity. God is extended beneath all that 
exists, thinks, moves. He is in all, and all is in Him. The 
pantheist, then, has a God, and, strictly speaking, he has 
nothing else. But his God is merely an infinite substance, a 
vague immensity — the one essence of Being extended every- 
where, of which man and all other existing things are but the 
modes. The world and all the fulness thereof mirrors to our 


22 


GOD. 


view the glory of the Infinite, Personal and Independent One. 
But the pantheist worships the mirror itself, and sums up his 
creed by saying that all is God. — Pearson on Infidelity , p. 23. 

Spinoza’s System Productive of Modern Pantheism. — It is the 
philosophy of Spinoza, propounded in the seventeenth century, 
and diffused over the Continent ever since by his writings, that 
has given the greatest impulse to the speculative mind of 
Germany, and produced that wide-spread pantheism so charac- 
teristic of German speculations. Schelling and Hegel, whose 
names are identified with the pantheism of the nineteenth 
century, are the fruit of his labors. They have refined and 
carried out the system to which Spinoza gave the form. In 
both of these philosophic leaders we see a thorough contempt 
for what is inductive and experimental, the method by which 
Newton attained an unprecedented eminence in physical science, 
and Locke rose to such high distinction in the science of the 
mind. The treasures of knowledge which observation con- 
tributes are professedly discarded by them, and these which 
abstract reason furnishes are exclusively valued. The evidence 
from design, which has been so fully illustrated by our own 
writers on natural theology, and which is so patent to the eyes 
of all men, is set at nought by the heads and disciples of this 
school ; and they pretend to prove all existence by laying down 
a priori axioms, and starting from them in a course of stern, 
logical argumentation. By this process, Fichte, who preceded 
the two philosophers referred to, brought to a fatal consumma- 
tion what is called subjective idealism. Nature and God, in his 
philosophy, vanished. Self became the solitary existence in 
the universe, and the Creator of everything else, human and 
divine. The moral order of the world was all that was left for 
the world’s God, and the philosopher stood on the very brink 
of absolute atheism. From this, the mind of Germany shrunk 
back, and Schelling reproduced, in an attractive form, the 
pantheistic system, the tendency towards which is so strong in 
the great Fatherland. 

Subject vs. Object, According to Schelling.— He identified the 
subject and the object, and made them the manifestations of 
God or the Absolute. Nature with him is but the self-develop- 
ment of Deity. The whole phenomena of the universe have pro- 
ceeded in one strict chain of necessary evolution. And God has 


GOD. 


23 


only come to realize Himself, and attain self-conscicusness, in 
man. Everything, according to this system, exists in God, and 
He is, of necessity, the All One. The system, in so far as it is in- 
telligible, proclaimed the universe to be God. There was, how- 
ever, another step to be taken before the climax was reached, and 
that step was boldly taken by Hegel. He denied the existence 
of both subject and object, and left only a universe of relations. 
Everything with him is a process of thought, and God Himself 
is the whole process. The Deity is not a self-existent reality, 
but a never-ending self-discession, which never realizes itself 
so fully as in the human consciousness. Creation, according to 
this, is not a single act, but God is necessarily ever creating. 
The pantheism of the Hegelian system is obvious amid much of 
the mysticism that shrouds it. Nature is absorbed in God, and 
God and the universe, whatever they be, are identified. 

Hegel and Strauss as Factors in the Case.— By this same process 
of pure philosophic thought, Hegel pretended to deduce the 
whole or doctrinal Christianity. Schelling, before him, had 
made the Gospel revelation one of the modes in which God is 
manifesting Himself in history. But Hegel, by his philosophy, 
transformed Christianity into a system of regularly evolved 
ideas, the value of which is altogether independent of historical 
testimony . 

It is at this point that David Frederick Strauss and his 
school appear. He has put on the Hegelian armor, taken his 
stand in the very heart of the Christian theology, scattered into 
air the grand pbjective element of the Gospel, and left nothing 
remaining except a few religious ideas or conceptions of the 
mind. He is, strictly speaking, neither a rationalist nor a 
supernaturalist. He disavows all connection with either, and 
proclaims war against both. He is, however, a pantheist in the 
extreme. He represents the far left of the Hegelian party, and 
stands on the very verge of atheism, if he has not fallen into 
the gulf. God is, with him, a process of thought. He has no 
separate individual existence. Apart from the universe, or out 
of that process which is alleged to be eternally unfolding itself, 
and which attains the highest state of consciousness in the 
mind of the philosopher himself, there is no God. No room 
whatever is left in the system for the intervention of a personal 
God, and in the system a personal God has no existence. 
Hence, his mythical theory. 


24 


GOD. 


Strauss’ View of the Historical Christ.— The historical Christ 
of the gospels, according to him, was the personified ideas of 
the Church. The Divine Redeemer was a process, a personality 
gradually formed out of elements contributed by Old Testa- 
ment history, rabbinical tradition, and the state of the popular 
mind at the time when the Messiah was expected. In other 
words, Christ was the creation of the Church, not the founder 
of it. Such a person as Jesus, it is admitted, lived and died, 
who believed himself to be the Christ. Strauss recognized a 
small historical element in the person of Jesus, a kind of skel- 
eton which the Church gradually clothed with flesh and blood, 
the distinguishing attributes of which were an investment 
thrown around it from the mind of the Church itself. The fully 
developed Christ of the gospel was thus made the embodied 
aggregate of the conceptions of the first Christians and the 
thoughts of the past. 

This is the latest shape, with the exception, perhaps, of Feur- 
bach’s, which German infidelity has assumed, the extreme point 
to which pantheism has been carried, and where it becomes 
almost, if not altogether, identical with atheism. It leaves no 
God, but a vague personification of human consciousness. The 
existence of a divine consciousness separate from the human 
is ignored. It sweeps the world clean of an historical Chris- 
tianity. It binds up all the physical and moral movements 
of the world in one unbroken chain of necessary develop- 
ment. And having left no Supreme and Independent object 
of Worship, it takes away the Bible, and presents us with 
nothing in its room but mythological ideas, embellishing the 
shadow of a reality . — Pearson on Infidelity , 29-31. 

Thought and the Thinker. — (1.) You say that you are sure you 
are a thinker, because you know there is thought in you. 

(2.) I know there is a Thinker in the universe, because there 
is thought in it. 

(3.) There cannot be thought without a thinker. 

(4.) But a thinker is a person. 

(5.) Therefore, there is a Personal Thinker in the universe. — 
Joseph Cook's Transcendentalism , 177. 

Personality Superior to Impersonality.— It is clear that any- 
thing which does not possess personality, or possesses it in a 
low degree, whether it be like the earth, however exquisitely 


GOD. 


25 


modeled into beauty and sublimity manifold, or the beasts of 
the field, however marvelous their living powers, must be 
inferior to ourselves. And therefore, Almighty God must be a 
person likewise. For, if not, He would be inferior to ourselves, 
contrary to the supposition on which we go. And the very 
name imports that. He is, at all events, the highest of beings. 
You may, if you please, indeed, abandon the intellect to the 
lawless tyranny of imagination; drunk with the maddening wine 
of intellectual licentiousness and creative speculation, you 
may rave eloquently of a Being of infinite power, who pours 
forth out of his exhaustless bosom, unfathomable as the abyss 
of space itself, all glory, all living things, multitudinous and 
diversified beyond created arithmetic, such as fill the universe. 
And yet, by the same right of unreason and self-will, you may 
lay it down that He has not a self-consciousness, nor a choice, 
nor anything, in short, of that which makes fts, to our fellow- 
men, objects of love and hope, of dread and hatred, of joy and 
of misery. And you may then, piling postulate on postulate 
into the empty air, till you reach, in haze and mist, the limbo of 
unreality, set up this blind, and dumb and deaf abomination, 
with a crown upon its head, on the Throne of Him who is, and 
was, and is to be, the living Jehovah. But this is not a God 
according to the supposition, and of course is not a living, 
loving, avenging, awful Deity. Why, in such a case, though the 
spirit within us is clothed in perishable dust and ashes, we 
should be far superior, in the order of intelligent being, to such 
a Deity with all his immensity . — Professor GarhetVs Personality 
of God , p. 26. 

Matter and Mind as Forces. — (1.) Only matter and mind exist in 
the universe. 

(2.) Matter is inert, that is, it cannot originate force or motion. 

(3.) If, therefore, matter moves or exhibits force, that force 
must originate in mind. 

(4.) That mind is God. 

(5.) Matter does move and exhibit force now and here. 

(6.) God, therefore, is now and here, since where he acts, 
there He is. 

Or, we may say : 

(1.) All the forces of matter are upheld by the infinite will, 
or not upheld. 


26 


GOD. 


(2.) If they are not upheld, they act as a machine. 

(3.) But it has been shown that they cannot act as a machine. 

(4.) Therefore, they are upheld. 

(5.) The Divine Mind, therefore, is omnipresent in the created 
universe. 

Or, if we assert that second causes exist, we may reach the 
conclusion of the Divine omnipresence, thus : 

(1.) Second causes are omnipresent in the created universe. 

(2.) But the first cause, that is, God’s will, and second causes, 
though distinguishable in thought, are inseparable things. 

(3.) God, therefore, is omnipresent. — Joseph Cook , God in 
Natural Law, “Complete Preacher,” Oct., 1877. 

God’s Existence Argued Logically.— I think it beyond question 
that man has a clear idea of his own being ; he knows, certainly, 
that he exists and that he is something. In the next place, man 
knows by an intuitive certainty that bare nothing can no more 
produce any real being than it can be equal to two right angles. 
If, therefore, we know there is some real being, and that nonen- 
tity cannot produce any real being, it is an evident demonstra- 
tion that from eternity there has been something ; since what 
was not from eternity had a beginning, and what had a 
beginning must be produced by something else. Next, it is 
evident that what had its being and beginning from another, 
must also have all that which is in, and belongs to its being, 
from another, too. All the powers it has must be owing to, and 
received from, the same source. This eternal source, then, of 
all being, must also be the source and original of all power ; and 
so this eternal being must be also the most powerful. Again, 
a man finds in himself perception and knowledge; we are 
certain, then, that there is not only some being, but some 
knowing, intelligent being. For it is as repugnant to the 
idea of senseless matter, that it should put into itself sense, 
perception and knowledge, as it is repugnant to the idea of a 
triangle, that it should put into itself greater angles than two 
right angles. — Locke's Essays , Book IV, Cliapt . 10. 

To Think is to Be. — Leibnitz said, there is being in every 
thought. The very idea of being implies, in its lowest degree, 
an idea (more or less clear, yet real) of being itself, that is, of 
God. To think is to know that we think ; it is to confide in 
our thought, that is, to confide in the principle of thought, that 


GOD. 


27 


is, to believe in the existence of that principle. As this does 
not imply that we believe ourselves, or that we believe the 
world, and yet implies, we believe— it is evident that, whether 
we know it or do not know it, it implies that we believe in the 
absolute principle of thought; so that all thought implies a 
spontaneous faith in God, and natural atheism has no existence. 

Cousin’s Introduction to History of Philosophy, p. 173. 

The Capacities of God at Least Equal to Those of Man.— Consider, 
my Aristodemus, that the soul which resides in thy body can 
govern it at pleasure ; why, then, may not the soul of the 
universe, which pervades and animates every part of it, govern 
it in like manner ? If thine eye hath the power to take in many 
objects, and these placed at no small distance from it, marvel 
not if the eye of Deity can, at one glance, comprehend the 
whole. And as thou perceivest it not beyond thy ability to 
extend thy care, at the same time, to the concerns of Athens, 
Egypt, Sicily, why thinkest thou, my Aristodemus, that the 
Providence of God may not easily extend itself through the 
whole universe 7 — Socrates’ Memorabilia, I, 4. 

God’s Nature Demands Such a System as We Sec.— Were we to 
find in actual existence a personal power to whom nothing is 
impossible, and learn that he is about to produce a universe, 
we should expect to see produced just such a wonderfully strong 
nature as we actually have — a nature peopled with strengths, 
momenta, brawny agencies of most imposing forms and magni- 
tudes. A weak system, a system that is puny in its operations 
and trifling in its effects, would misrepresent him — shall I not 
say, would be unworthy of him 7 Most persons would certainly 
call it unsuitable ; would say that his very nature as an infinite 
power would demand of him that he should produce a system 
that would be continually turning out the greatest results, and 
so must include forces of the greatest efficiency. When, then, 
I am told that a sublime force, who has Almighty for his name, 
is the author of nature ; and I then proceed to place myself out 
under the dome amid the pulsings and tossings of innumerable 
and sometimes immeasurable momenta, and so lay myself hon- 
estly open to all their subtle hints and magnetisms, I feel 
myself silently drinking in predispositions to faith as the 
exposed fleece drinks in the dew — I feel that the doctrine 
matches facts ; that the asserted Creator and creation fit each 


28 


GOD. 


other as do the die and the face of the coin which it has 
stamped ; that the theory has at least the benediction of yet 
another verisimilitude and presumption; that nature, instead 
of making oath with serene brow and uplifted hand that there 
is no wondrous God, significantly asks, with abashed voice, “Is 
there not such a Being'?” — Pater Mundi, 179. 

A First Cause a Logical Necessity.— From the existence of the 
world, we necessarily infer the existence of a Supreme Being, 
who is the cause of the world’s existence. The assemblage of 
things and events which we describe by the abstracted term, 
nature, directs us to a belief in an author of nature. Every- 
thing and every event must have a cause ; that cause again 
must have its cause, and so on. But this series must termi- 
nate ; there must be & First Cause. This Supreme Being, this 
author of nature, this first cause, is God, the Creator of the 
world and of all that it contains, including man. — WhewelVs 
Morality , Vol. 2, 26. 

Wise Among Heathen Admit a God. — The wise and learned 
amongst the very heathen themselves have all acknowledged 
some First Cause whereupon originally the being of all things 
dependeth ; neither have they otherwise spoken of that cause 
than as an agent, which knoweth what and why it worketh, 
and observeth in working a most exact order or law. — Hooker . 

The Intellectual Nature of the Deity a Unity.— In all those 
works on natural theology that treat, like the work of Paley, 
on the argument of design, the assumption of a certain unity of 
the intellectual nature of the Creator and creature is made, 
tacitly at least, the basis of all the reasonings ; and it is in the 
cases in which the design is most simple that the argument is 
most generally understood. We infer, from the more simple 
and familiar instances of adaptation, furnished by the works of 
the Creator, rather than from the complex mechanisms, that He 
who wrought of old, after the manner of a man, must have, in 
his intellectual character, if I may so express myself, certain 
man-like qualities and traits. — Hugh Miller : Test, of Bocks , 253. 

Tlic Sadness of Atheism. — I am not a sad man. Spite of the 
experience of life — somewhat bitter — I am a cheerful, and joy- 
ous, and happy man. But, take away my consciousness of God ; 
let me believe there is no Infinite God ; no infinite Mind which 
thought the world into existence, and thinks it into continuance ; 


GOD. 


29 


no infinite Conscience winch everlastingly enacts the eternal 
laws of the universe; no infinite Affection which loves the 
world ; loves Abel and Cain — loves the drunkard’s wife and the 
drunkard ; the Mayors and Aldermen who made the drunkard ; 
which loves the victim of the tyrant, and loves the tyrant ; 
loves the slave and his master ; loves the murdered and the 
murderer, the fugitive and the kidnapper — publicly griping his 
price of blood, the third part of Iscariot’s pay, and then 
secretly taking his anonymous revenge, stealthily calumniating 
some friend of humanity ; that there is no God who watches 
over the nation, but “ forsaken Israel wanders lone that the 
sad people of Europe, Africa, America, have no guardian — 
then I should be sadder than Egyptian night ! My life would be 
only the shadow of a dimple on the bottom of a little brook — 
whirling and passing away; all the joy I have in the daily 
business of the world, in literature and science and art, in the 
friendships and wide philanthropies of the time, would perish 
at once — borne down in the rush of waters and lost in their 
headlong noise. Yes, I should die in uncontrollable anguish 
and grief. 

A realizing sense of atheism, a realizing sense of the conse- 
quences of atheism — that would separate our nature, and we 
should give up the ghost ; and the elements of the body would 
go back to the elements of the earth. But — God be thanked ! — 
the foundation of religion is too deep within us. There is a 
great cry through all creation for the Living God. Thanks to 
Him, the evidence of God has been ploughed into Nature so 
deeply, and so deeply woven into the texture of the human 
soul, that very few men call themselves atheists in this sense. 
No man ever willingly came to this conclusion: no man; no, 
not one ! These men, who have arrived at this conclusion — 
we should cast no scorn at them ; we should give them our 
sympathy; a friendly heart, and the most affectionate and 
tender treatment of their soul. — Theodore Parher’s Sermons on 
Theism , 36-37. 

What Produces Uniformity ? — What is a secondary cause ? or, 
in other words, what is a law of nature considered as a cause ? 
It is simply a uniform mode of operation. We find that heavy 
bodies uniformly tend towards the earth’s center, and that we 
call the law of gravity ; but if those bodies sometimes ascended, 


30 


GOD. 


and sometimes moved horizontally, under the same circum- 
stances, we could not infer the existence of such a law. 

Now, there must be some cause for uniformity of operation 
in nature. There must be some foreign power which gives the 
uniformity, since it is certain that the law itself can possess no 
efficiency. We may, indeed, find one law dependent upon a 
second law, and this upon a third, and so on. But the inquiry 
still arises : What gives the efficiency to this second and third 
law? and still the answer must be, Something out of itself. So 
that if we run back on the chain of causes ever so far, we must 
still resort to the power of the Deity to find any efficiency that 
will produce the final result . — Hitchcock : Religion of Geology , 
330. 

A Law Presupposes an Agent. — A law supposes an agent and 
a power ; for it is the mode according to which the agent pro- 
ceeds, the order according to which the power acts. Without 
the presence of such an agent, of such a power, conscious of 
the relations on which the law depends, producing the effects 
which the law prescribes, the law can have no efficiency, no 
existence. Hence, we infer that the intelligence by which the 
law is ordained, the power by which it is put in action, must be 
present at all times and in all places where the effects of the 
law occur; that thus the knowledge and the agency of the 
Divine Being pervades every portion of the universe, pro- 
ducing all action and passion, all permanence and change. The 
laws of nature are the laws which He, in His wisdom, prescribes 
to His own acts ; His universal presence is the necessary con- 
dition of any course of events ; His universal agency the only 
origin of any efficient force. — Dr. Whewell : Bridgewater Treat- 
ise , 270. 

Proofs of a Self-Conscious Intelligence.— What is the nature 
of this all-ruling power ? This universal being, in whom all 
nature lives and moves, what is it? By the previous argu- 
ments we were forced to admit its spirituality and freedom. 
The continuous plan and order of nature, its countless 
adaptations, its complex and exquisite mechanism, its har- 
monious balance of warring powers, are all utterly unintelligible 
without the supposition that this being is a self-cbnscious 
intelligence. The so-called mechanical forces serve a controll- 
ing purpose. The chemical forces serve a controlling pur- 
pose. The organic forces seem instinct with intelligence. 


GOD. 


31 


Both in the single organ, and in the wide-reaching law, 
we mark the presence of mind. The units and the totality are 
alike informed by what is inconceivable, except as a guiding 
reason. 

This hypothesis is not unwarranted. It postulates nothing 
strange. We refer our own activity to our conscious will and 
purpose, and we but extend this principle when we refer 
nature’s activity to a conscious will and purpose. Purpose 
rules in the action of a rational man ; and finding nature replete 
with marks of purpose, he concludes that it rules in nature, 
too. And this hypothesis is the only one that explains the 
facts. There is no scientific discovery which in the least 
weakens its force. All the theories brought against it, at best, 
are full of impassable breaks ; while a closer examination shows 
that every one of them is self-destructive. Science, then, is 
shut up to positivism or theism. If it chooses to content itself 
with a lifeless registration of co-existence and sequence, it can 
make the attempt. But if it enters upon any explanation at all, 
it cannot stop short of a personal God . — Professor Bourne's 
Philosophy of Herbert Spencer, 257. 

Can the Infinite be Reached. — But, for the sake of progress in 
the argument, let us grant that we cannot reach the infinite ; 
still, before the imposibility of communion is affirmed, another 
question must be considered: Can the Infinite reach us? This 
is a question which Mr. Spencer entirely ignores. Intent only 
on casting opprobrium upon the human faculties, he forgets that, 
at the same time, he is charginginabilitiesupon the infinite, too. 
The moment we read the question in this order, all Mr. Spen- 
cer’s arguments turn traitor, and fire into his own ranks. 
Inasmuch as the infinite includes all possibilities, it of course 
includes the possibility of self-revelation. Mr. Spencer is often 
praised for his “severe logic,” and I have even seen him styled 
a “modern Aristotle” by some enthusiastic admirer; but I 
confess that passages like the following stagger me : “ But it is 
obvious that the infinite cannot be distinguished, as such, from 
the finite by the absence of any quality which the finite 
possesses, for such absence would be a limitation .” — First 
Principles, page 57. 

Spencer’s Views of the Infinite Severely Tested. — On reading 
this, I took heart; the infinite is all that the finite is, and more. 
It is their living, conscious intelligence. It is, too, a free mind 


32 


GOD. 


like our own. In it abide all thoughts of beauty, and all love 
of good. One phase of the infinite lies over against our finite 
nature, and runs parallel with it ; and through that phase the 
finite and the infinite can commune. All these beliefs I based 
upon Mr. Spencer’s declaration. But my satisfaction was short- 
lived. On page 111, the claim that “the universe is the 
manifestation and abode of a free mind like our own,” is given 
as an illustration of the impiety of the pious. Is it possible ? 
Why, have we not just learned that the infinite must have all 
the finite has ? Is this the “severe logic” of the “modern Aris- 
totle ” ? I wonder what the ancient Aristotle would have said 
to this f The infinite must be everything ; yet, to say that it is 
living, conscious intelligence, is the vilest fetichism. It must 
possess all power and transcend all law — yet has not the power 
of revelation. Able to sow space with suns and systems, to 
scatter beauty broadcast like the light, to maintain the whole 
in everlasting rhythm ; but, utterly unable to reach the human 
soul ! Mr. Spencer has much to say about contradictions ; let 
the reader judge whose is the contradiction here. By his own 
reasoning, he is involved in the most perfect dilemma possible ; 
if God be infinite, He can reach us ; if not infinite, we can reach 
Him. In either case, communion is possible. 

AH that is Claimed for the Knowledge of the Infinite.— But here, 
as in the case of matter, while insisting upon a real 
knowledge of God, I am very far from claiming a complete 
one. Religion does not pretend to give a rationale of the 
divine existence any more than of our own. The mystery of 
existence is equally insoluble in both cases. * * * All that is 
claimed is, that we have a real, though finite knowledge of the 
Deity — not an infinite thought, but a finite thought about the 
infinite, which, like the infinite series of the mathematician, is 
true as far as it goes, though carried to only a limited number 
of terms. All our science and all our theology are but the 
slightest surface-play on the bosom of fathomless mystery ; but 
this is a very different thing from saying that what we do know 
is untrustworthy. 

The only important bearing of the nescience doctrine is a 
religious one. Science would go on in just the same way as at 
present, collecting and co-ordinating its facts, though the facts 
were proved to be phantoms. Common life would experience 
no change. The most thorough-going know-nothing' would be 


GOD. 


33 


as eager to get bread as the realist ; lie would be as careful to 
keep out of a relative fire or a relative river, as out of an 
absolute one. In all these cases the practical necessity would 
override the speculative error. 

Nescience Destroys Moral Effort.— But it is not so in morals 
and religion. There we are not forced to act ; there we arc 
constantly seeking some excuse for inaction. Even the suspi- 
cion that our religious ideas are delusions leads us to a speedy 
relaxation of moral effort, as they know too well who have at 
any time made nescience their theology. To declare our knowl- 
edge imperfect and inadequate, is admissible ; but to declare it 
utterly false, is fatal to religion. It is useless to leave us our 
religious ideas as regulative truths — that is, things good for us 
to believe, but without foundation in fact. A regulative truth 
will regulate until one discovers the fraud ; but he must have 
very little knowledge of human nature who imagines that it 
will have any authority after the trick has been found out. 
These gleams of good that sometimes visit us, these occasional 
intimations of a solemn beauty and a perfect purity, these 
undying suspicions of conscience which we have fancied are 
tokens of a will and holiness more august than our own — all 
these things, which we thought point upward to God, are 
found to point nowhere, and are but magnificent will-o’-the- 
wisps. Why pursue them ? It might be safe to follow them, 
but it might also be dangerous. Who can tell into what bogs 
they may lead and leave one ? The only rational thing to do 
is to ignore them. Proved to be phantoms, they shall delude 
us no longer. 

No ! out of this blank abyss of total darkness, neutral alike 
to good and evil, no inspiration of the soul can come. Religion 
cannot live on nescience, and reverence is impossible toward 
a blank. In contemplating Him we shall ever be as men watch- 
ing in the darkness of early dawn, with a deep sense of awe 
and mystery pressing upon us ; still there must be some glow 
upon the hill-tops and a flush in the upper air. There must, 
indeed, be a solemn silence, that reverence may bow low and 
worship ; but there must also be a voice which we can trust, 
bidding us not be afraid . — Professor Boicne’s Philosophy of 
Herbert Spencer , page 70-8. 

Why is the Infinite and Absolute Rejected by Scientists ?— But if 
the conception of an Infinite and Absolute Being, Omniscient, 
C 


34 


GOD. 


Omnipotent and Holy, be tbns taught by nature, what are the 
causes of its non-acceptance by prominent teachers of science 
and philosophy in our own day? What reasons are brought 
forward against it ? 

Mr. Herbert Spencer is the most decided upholder of the 
necessity and truth of a conception of a First Cause. But this 
he speaks of as the Unknowable, and denies our right to ascribe 
to it any attribute other than existence, or to attribute to it 
personality. But, in the first place, not to speak of it by that 
term, is, practically, to degrade it to a lower level than ourselves, 
though this is by no means Mr. Spencer’s intention. It has 
this practical effect, because we cannot conceive anything as 
impersonal and yet of a higher nature than our own. And, 
indeed, this circumstance is not owing to a mere mental impo- 
tence, but to a positive and clear perception. For, to be a 
person, means to be a being possessing knowledge and will ; 
and any being which has not these faculties, must be indefinitely 
inferior to one which has them. The First Cause, as the cause 
of all knowledge, including knowledge of good and evil, and all 
power of will, must be adequate to their protection. He must 
possess, therefore, attributes analogous to these qualities as 
known in ourselves, though, of course, infinite in degree. 
Personality, therefore, must be predicated of the First Cause, 
under pain of violating the primary dicta of our reason. — Les- 
sons from Nature , Mivart , 361. 

Causation Does not Ask us to Seek for an Infinite Series.— It will 
be observed that the principle of causation, while it constrains 
us to seek for a pow er in a substance, does not, when properly 
interpreted, necessitate us to look for an infinite series of 
causes. The intuition is satisfied when it reaches a Being with 
power adequate to the whole effect ;and if, on the contempla- 
tion of the nature of that Being, we find no marks of His being 
an effect, the intuition makes no call on us to go further. It 
feels restless, indeed, till it attains this point. As long as it is 
mounting the chain, it is compelled to go on ; it feels that it 
cannot stop, and yet is confidently looking for a termination ; 
but when it reaches the All Powerful Being, it stays in assur- 
ance and comfort, as feeling that it has reached a sure and 
unmovable resting-place. — McCosli’s Intuitions, 386. 

What the Feeling of Dependence Does.— The feeling of depen- 


GOD. 


35 


dence is the instinct which urges us to pray. It is the feeling 
that our existence and welfare are in the hands of a Superior 
Power — not of an inexorable Fate or immutable Law ; but of a 
Being having at least so far the attributes of Personality, that 
He can show favor or severity to those dependent upon Him, 
and can be regarded by them with the feelings of hope, and fear, 
and reverence, and gratitude. It is a feeling similar in kind, 
though higher in degree, to that which is awakened in the mind 
of the child towards his parent, who is first manifested to his 
mind as the giver of such things as are needful. — Mansel: 
Limits of Bel. Thought, 119. 

Descarte’s Axiom. — I think, therefore, I am a person. And I 
must have been brought into existence by a being at least as 
perfect as I am, for the fountain cannot rise higher than the 
source. — Descartes . 

Eternity Not Compatible with Duration.— If this pre-existent 
eternity is not compatible with a successive duration, as we 
clearly and distinctly perceive that it is not, then it remains 
that some being, though infinitely above our finite comprehen- 
sions, must have had an identical, invariable continuance from 
all eternity, which being is no other than God. — Bentley. 

God Above and Beyond All. — As He created all things, so is He 
beyond and in them all, not only in power, as under his subjec- 
tion, or in his presence, as being in his cognition, but in his very 
essence, as being the soul of their causalities and the essential 
cause of their existence. This is the consolation of all good 
men, unto whom his ubiquity affordeth continual comfort and 
security, and this is the affliction of hell, to whom it affordeth 
despair and remediless calamity . — Sir T. Browne: Vulgar Errors. 

What to do when Reason is Afloat. — When my reason is afloat, 
my faith cannot long remain in suspense, and I believe in God 
as firmly as in any other truth whatever ; in short, a thousand 
motives draw me to the consolatory side, and add the weight 
of hope to the equilibrium of reason. — Rousseau. 

Good English Sense. — There was no other cause proceeding than 
His own will, no other matter than His own power, no other 
workman than His own word, and no other consideration than 
His own infinite goodness . — Sir W. Raleigh. 

God in His Threefold Attitude.— God appears before the uni- 


36 


GOD 


verse of intellectuals in the threefold attitude of Creator, Law- 
giver and Redeemer ; and although each of these involves and 
reveals many of his excellencies, still in each department three 
are most conspicuous. As Creator, wisdom, power and good- 
ness ; as Lawgiver, justice, truth and holiness ; as Redeemer, 
mercy, condescension aud love. In each and all of which de- 
partments he is infinite, immutable and eternal. — A. Campbell. 

The Service Nature Renders us as Respects Causation.— The 
service which the phenomena of nature renders us in the argu- 
ment of cause and effect, is not exhausted when they place us 
on the solid ground of a primary cause. They give us no little 
or unimportant light in respect to the nature and attributes of 
this first cause. Assuming that this cause must be at least 
equal, if not superior, to the effects which it produces — an as- 
sumption, if not necessitated, yet justified by reason — we must 
find a nature in it equal, if not superior, to anything we may 
find in the effect ; and also attributes which are the same in 
nature and kind, as those observed in the intelligent beings 
which He has created, since that which is created cannot excel> 
or be superior to, that which it creates. If, therefore, we find 
mind in the effect, we must infer its existence in the cause. 
That mind exists in created beings, is too evident to require 
proof or illustration. Hence, the existence of mind in creatures, 
demonstrates its existence in the Creator, and necessitates the 
conclusion that the first cause is an intelligent being. — Dr. 
Christopher : The Remedial System , p. 14. 

What is that Being that is Ever Near I— We move through a world 
of mystery, and the deepest question is, “ What is the Being 
that is ever near, sometimes felt, never seen ; that which has 
haunted us from childhood with a dream of something surpass- 
ingly fair, which has never yet been realized ; that which sweeps 
through the soul at times as a desolation, like the blast from 
the wings of the Angel of Death, leaving us stricken and silent 
in our loneliness ; that which has touched us in our tenderest 
point, and the flesh has quivered with agony, and our mortal 
affections have shrivelled up with pain ; that which comes to us 
in aspirations of nobleness, and conceptions of superhuman 
excellence ? Shall we say It or He ? What is It ? Who is He ? 
Those anticipations of immortality and Cod, what are they? 
Are they the mere throbbings of my own heart, heard and mis- 


GOD. 


37 


taken for a living something beside me? Are they the sound 
of my own wishes echoing through the vast void of nothing- 
ness ? Or shall I call them God, Father, Spirit, Love? A 
living Being within me or outside me!” Tell me Thy name, 
thou awful mystery of Loveliness ! That is the struggle of all 
earnest life. — F. W. Robertson : Vol. 1 , 70. 

Phenomena Not All that we Know. — Phenomena are not all that 
we know. We know also the Whence and the Whither. Tradi- 
tion looks about on wonderful nature, and then points upward 
with her finger of mist. Science looks about on a nature still 
more wonderful, and then points upward with her finger of 
stone. Bevelation looks about on a nature — oh, how much 
more wonderful still — and then points upward with both hands 
and with all her fingers of gold. Following with our eyes those 
significant fingers — up through transparency after transparency, 
through azure after azure, through vacant infinity after vacant 
infinity — we come at last, not to a brute fog and miserable jumble 
of know-nothing mechanics and chemistries that somehow 
manage to swing from everlasting to everlasting through para- 
dises of order and beauty and construction, but to a sceptered 
person whose glory abashes and rebukes all human words. 
That scepter waves, and from its diamond tip leap worlds, sys- 
tems, universes. That scepter waves again, and straightway 
the naked worlds are clothed with more than the jewelled robes 
of Solomon. Waves the scepter still again, and at once the 
miracle animals take their places in the ready palaces of sea 
and air and land. Waves again, and still more emphatically 
that scepter, and lo, souls with their constellation faculties and 
glorious orbits of thought and hope and achievement and virtue, 
leap forth in still superbei astronomies to reign over all. Be- 
hold the Whence, the Whither also. — Dr. Burr: Doctrine of 
Evolution , 301. 

The Alarm of Anthropomorphism. — Finally, when driven from 
every other refuge, the atheist turns at bay and exclaims, 
u In your argument, based on reason and intuition, and especially 
on the design argument, you anthropomorphize God.” And 
with a sanctimonious horror he rolls up his eyes at the thought. 
He is so jealous of the dignity or sanctity of the divine attri- 
outes, that he would blot them out of being before he would 
impair them by anthropomorphism. It is as genuine and pro- 


38 


GOD. 


found as the reverence of the pirates, who captured a king’s 
ship, and then, with their faces prostrate on the deck, made 
him walk the plank into the sea, because they had too pro- 
found a reverence for his majesty to dare to look on him, as 
they would have to ao if he remained onboard. So, with faces 
prostrate in the dust of nescience, these awe-stricken atheists 
would make the Creator walk the plank of silence concerning 
His existence into the sea of oblivion, lest they anthropomor- 
phize His attributes by speaking of His acts, existence and 
presence, and by recognizing His agency in creation. It is an 
attempt to evade the argument by that strange spell, a name, 
and especially a very long one. It must be a terrible thing that 
has such a fearful name. But let us not be frightened. Let us 
dare to look the bugbear in the face. 

How, we assert that anthropomorphism of a certain kind is 
legitimate, for there can be no conception of nature without it, 
and that it is correct, for the nature of things clearly establishes 
it. Anthropomorphism in mental attributes, moral attri- 
butes and actions, is an absolute truth. Anthropomor- 
phism, in limitations and imperfections, is incorrect, and 
should be most carefully avoided. Let us, then, get the 
argument clearly before us, and see if we anthropo- 
morphize God in limitations and imperfections. The issue 
in the argument is, “Do co-ordination, adjustment and 
adaptation, into order, method and system, imply design, plan 
and purpose ? Do design, plan, purpose, method and system 
imply intelligence ¥ ” They do, and a man bids adieu to reason, 
and is not worthy of one moment’s further notice, who denies 
it. Do co-ordination, adjustment and adaptation, into order, 
method and system, in shaping materials, imply design, purpose 
and plan, in such shaping materials, and does such design, pur- 
pose and plan prove that intelligence shaped them ¥ A man 
must stultify his reason to deny it. Is there co-ordination, 
adjustment and adaptation, into an order, method and system, in 
the first constitution of things, and in things as they now exist? 
Do this order, method and system, this co-ordination, adapta- 
tion and adjustment, imply design, plan, purpose and prevision 
and provision in the first constitution of things, and in the 
present order of things ? Do such design, plan, purpose, pre- 
vision and provision, in accordance with law, expressing the 
highest conceptions of reason, imply the action of intelligence 


GOD. 


39 


in the first constitution of things and the present order of 
things ? A man offers an insult to all reason who attempts to 
deny one of these. 

We do not anthropomorphize God in this argument, for we 
do not assume or imply that he adjusts, designs and plans as 
man does. The argument does not imply similarity of method, 
but similarity of acts. It does not imply that there are any of 
the limitations or imperfections in the acts of the Creator, or 
any of the study, trial, failure or mistake, in His acts, that there 
are in man’s acts. On the contrary, the very fact that the Cre- 
ator is infinite, and His acts are infinite, excludes all such 
imperfection. All theists deny such imperfections, and are 
always very careful to exclude all such erroneous ideas from 
their argument. There is dishonesty in the persistent effort of 
the atheist to fasten on the theistic argument an absurdity 
utterly foreign to it, and that all theists repudiate. 

When we affirm that infinite space and time have the same 
essential attributes as finite space and time, we do not limit 
them as finite space and time are limited. When we expand 
space and time to infinity, we do not change the essential attri- 
butes of space and time. We only strip them of limitation and 
imperfection. When we assert the same attributes of absolute 
space and time that are possessed by finite space and time, we 
do not subject them to the limitations of finite space and time. 
So, when we affirm design, purpose and plan of the Infinite 
Cause, we do not, by such an act, subject the acts of the Infinite 
Cause to the same limitations and imperfections as are seen in 
similar acts of man, nor subject the Infinite Cause to the limi- 
tations and imperfections of man. We do not anthropomor- 
phize Him in a sense that would be objectionable, or in the 
sense in which the objection of the atheist asserts we anthro- 
pomorphize Him. We give to Him certain attributes, and 
ascribe to Him certain acts, that nature positively ascribes to 
Him. As the very fact that we make space and time absolute, 
strips them of all the imperfections of finite space and time, so 
does the fact that we make the First Cause absolute, strip Him 
of all the imperfections that the atheist objects to, and renders 
the anthropomorphism that he objects to impossible. It leaves 
the attributes He has in common with man, and the identical 
acts of these attributes, on which the design argument is based, 
free from all imperfections, and all such anthropomorphizing as 


40 


GOD. 


that on which the objection of the atheist is based. The argu- 
ment is based on a similarity in kind, and not on a similarity of 
degree. Similarity of degree is utterly foreign to the argu- 
ment . — Clark Braden : Problem of Problems , page 287-90. 

How Far We Can Comprehend God. — To affirm, as has been 
affirmed from the highest seat of orthodoxy, that God in himself 
is wholly unknowable, and that the void can only be filled by 
the authoritative teaching of the Church, seems to me one of the 
most irreligious doctrines ever propounded to the world — a 
desperate attempt to uphold the necessity of a hierarchy at the 
risk of possible Atheism. We cannot, it is true, comprehend 
God in the infinitude of His unsearchable nature ; but we 
know enough of Him through the clearest revelations of our 
own consciousness, to feel certain that He is something more 
than a name for unintelligent force and immoral law ; that in 
His relation to us He is a spiritual reality, a Living God. We 
rise up out of our own self-knowledge, which is the nearest to 
us of all realities, to the idea of God, the highest mind, which 
cannot be disjoined from the sense of our own; and though 
the vast conception, as it ever ascends and expands, is lost at 
length to our distinct cognizance in the depths of the Infinite, 
it preserves, nevertheless, the clearest characters of reality, 
so far as we can trace it ; and we feel that it has a vital root in 
ourselves. The ascription of moral attributes to God is the 
most valuable result of this deduction of His nature from our 
own self-consciousness ; for it is an inference which physical 
phenomena could never of themselves have suggested : though 
once assumed from the necessary laws of mind, it is applicable 
to them, and supplies a possible explanation of some of their 
darkest mysteries. Mere power, working on a large scale 
without moral guidance, could only originate confusion and 
deformity. Truth, justice, holiness and love seem to me the 
essential conditions of all fruitful, harmonious and self-consist- 
ent action. Without such principles as its basis, I am unable to 
conceive how a universe like ours could continue to exist. The 
finest productions of human genius are consummated under 
the influence of these mental qualities. The highest beauty is 
the expression of their mingling quintessence. Now, what is 
highest in man must be infinitely higher in God ; and the pos- 
session of a moral trust in God is an exhaustless source of 


GOD. 


41 


comfort and. support to the soul . — John James Tayler : Chris- 
tian Aspects of Faith and Duty, p. 312. 

The Affinity of the Divine and Human.— This remarkable pas- 
sage (Gen. 1, 27) contains the root-idea of the theology of the 
Bible. It declares that God and man are of kindred nature ; 
that the Father has stamped His own image on His son; 
and that, consequently, that intercommunion between God and 
man must be possible which is involved in the mutual relation 
of parent and child. This is what divines mean by the person- 
ality of God. It is clothing the first cause with moral attri- 
butes, ending it with conciousness and will, and assigning to 
it purpose and character: so that it offers a counterpart to our 
human sympathies and aspirations, and becomes an object of 
reverence, affection and trust. This belief in the affinity of 
the divine and human, which has its source in one of the deep- 
est instincts of our being, gave birth undoubtedly in the early 
ages of the world to very gross and anthropomorphic concep- 
tions of God, of which we can trace no indistinct reflection in 
the oldest records of the Bible. But gross as such concep- 
tions may appear to us in the unqualified strength of their 
original popular enunciation, they contain at bottom a pro- 
found spiritual truth, clearly distinguishable, on a little reflec- 
tion, from the sensuous imagery through which it rendered 
itself dimly intelligible to rude and uncultivated minds. 
These grosser anthropomorphisms had their use and signifi- 
cance in the time and place to which they naturally belonged ; 
they corresponded to the actual capacity for the timebeing of 
our slowly advancing race ; and they would gradually have ex- 
panded into juster and nobler views, had the development of 
religious ideas been left to its free and unimpeded course. 
But the spontaneous devotion and poetry of rude ages and 
simple natures was arrested in its growth by the mischievous 
interference of priests and theologians. They crystallized it 
into creeds, in the vain attempt to make that eternal which 
was only temporal, and fenced it round with the formulas of 
an artificial science, which took so strong a hold of the reli- 
gious mind that they seemed, in the first instance, only to 
strike a deeper root in the literal scripturalism, in the bibliol- 
atry, as Coleridge called it, of the new life of Protestantism. 

Reaction from a Coarse Anthropomorphism, — But this could not 


42 


GOD. 


endure forever. The stern Nemesis of Faith is beginning at 
length to manifest itself. The time for reaction has come, and 
we are now paying the inevitable penalty of intermeddling 
with the natural and orderly development of the human mind. 
Disgust at the coarse and offensive representations of the 
divine nature exhibited by the popular creeds, originating in 
comparatively dark ages, and perpetuated by mere authority 
into the midst of our present scientific light, is driving men 
almost unconsciously, in their earnest struggle after a more 
rational and spiritual faith, into an absolute denial of the pro- 
per personality of God, involving them in simple Pantheism, 
or the identification of deity with the physical universe, and 
disposing them to seek in the recognition of mere law, pervad- 
ing force, and phenomenal order an equivalent for the old faith 
in a living God. These oscillations from one extreme of opin- 
ion to another, mark the history of human thought. Those 
who have studied it might have foreseen that, on the first 
breaking down of the old theologies, such a result was sure to 
occur. But while we acknowledge the unavoidable operation 
of this law of action and reaction, we must not suppose that 
either extreme expresses the entire truth, which lies some- 
where between them; nor forget that in the present strong 
and widespread alienation from all human conceptions of God 
as a Friend and a Father, a great principle is lost sight of, and 
the hold is relinquished on all spiritual reality. 

Personality of God the Foundation of all Religion.— The person- 
ality of God, in the sense already explained, as implying a mys- 
terious affinity and inter-communion between the Divine and 
the human spirit, is the foundation of all religion, involved in 
all worship, indispensable to all faith and prayer. We cannot 
love and reverence mere law. We cannot pour out our souls 
in joy and sorrow, in contrition and thankfulness, to simple 
force. There must be a belief in the living sympathy of con- 
scious spirit to produce anything that deserves the name of 
religion. Take that trust from the heart of man, anej. what a 
wilderness this beautiful universe becomes, peopled with fleet- 
ing shadows, and echoing to vast and gloomy vacancy ! The 
instinctive prayer of the human soul, the unbidden ejacula- 
tion for help and comfort which escapes at times, even from 
the lips of unbelieving men, the unseen but unmistakable 


GOD. 


43 


presence of Something higher and holier than ourselves, 
which enfolds us with its silent blessing in the dark hour of 
sorrow and bereavement — that voice of Faith which speaks 
through our collective humanity, and makes itself heard from 
the earliest records of its existence on our planet, in its sim- 
ple poetry, its rude art, its quaint but touching usages, in every 
expression of its deepest trust and tenderest affection — all 
these things are to me the clear witness of Nature herself to 
the grandest of all truths, inscribed on the very front of the 
Bible— that there is a Living God, the Father of our spirits, 
who formed us in His own image, that we might be conscious of 
our kindred with Him, and in the sense of it might worship 
and love and serve Him . — John James Tayler : Ibid , 308-H. 

The Great Error of Anthropomorphism.— The great error of an- 
thropomorphism, or the interpreting of God from the experien- 
ces of human nature, has consisted in this: that men have 
ascribed to their deities their lower nature, while, as yet, they 
had no moral richness or excellence. Men were accustomed to 
ascribe to their gods, when they attempted to frame them, 
attributes from the worst of themselves ; the passions of men, 
their appetites, their rage, their anger, their jealousies, their 
lower nature, have been taken. The mistake consists, not in 
inferring God’s nature from something in ourselves, but in 
taking the wrong part of ourselves, and interpreting the Divine 
nature from that. It is the higher nature of man that furnishes 
the ideal conceptions of God. Without this higher form of an- 
thropomorphism there is no Christianity ; there is no practical 
and comforting view of God ; there is no c ompanionable Father 
in heaven ; there is nothing left for the heart; there is nothing 
left to excite sympathy; there is nothing left for love, for 
gratitude, or sweet affection. God, thought of only as He is 
interpreted through the alembic of scientific research upon the 
material globe, is but an engineer. The world is a mill — not a 
mansion. It is only when we retreat from the outer course of 
things to the inner — to that which we all admit to be the flower 
of nature— man ; and man’s interior, and the best part of it ; it 
is only when we come to the least unfolded, though the most 
progressive elements of man, that we approach the secret 
things of nature, and have any data by which to interpret what 
God’s nature is, and what His government is to be. All that 


44 


god. 


which is best and noblest in human experience in the ages of 
the world — that part of nature it is which furnishes our types, 
our analogies, our facts for inferences. — Beecher : vol. 7,p. 336. 

Nature of God Inferred by Jesus from Analogy.— By direct an- 
alogy our Master taught us to infer the nature of God. If a 
son ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a 
stone ? Or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent 1 
Or if he ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion ? If ye, then, 
being evil, being selfish, being imperfect, give good gifts to 
your children ; if parental love, poor as it is, is not so poor but 
that it will give to the child what the child wants and asks for, 
within the limits of his own benefit ; if ye, being low down in 
giving-power, do these things ; if it is simply impossible for a 
child to appeal to a father or a mother for necessary things 
without a response, and without the benefit — how much more 
shall your Father in heaven give you the things which you need 
and petition for ? If you give thought, and sympathy and affec- 
tion, and yearning and desire to those that are dependent upon 
you ; if that is the quality of human nature ; if that is the charac- 
teristic of the mother-nature and the father-nature ; if it is that 
which the heart tends to do always, the world around, alike 
among savages, barbarians and civilized people, among the un- 
lettered and educated; if it is the universal tendency of 
parental human nature to leap to supply the want of the child — 
Jesus stands and says : Your Father is ineffably more a Father 
than you are. If you, being evil, low, undeveloped, imperfect 
in every way, seamed and veined with selfishness, know how to 
do so much good, how much more shall your heavenly Father 
do good, giving the holy spirit to them that ask Him ; or as it 
is stated in another place, “ give good gifts to those that ask 
him ? 77 

Here, then, is our Master taking the great facts of human ex- 
perience, and laying them as a part of the argument over against 
the divine nature, saying : u This which in you exists in the 
small, in the miniature, in the imperfect condition, exists in 
God in transcendent measure, magnified, augmented, deepened, 
enriched, more fruitful and more powerful. 77 This was the 
reasoning of the Savior. — Beecher: vol. 7, p. 337. 

[Yes, and unless he was a fool, which is to say,*an impostor, it will 
stand, whether the material scientists, many of whom admit His match- 
less character, admit that of his God, and their God, or not.— Ed.'] 


GOD. 


45 


No Antagonisms Should Exist Between our Conception of Divine 
and Human Beings. — That any antagonism should be supposed to 
exist between those “ Laws ” which express the uniformities of 
nature discovered by science, and the will of the Author of 
nature as manifested in those uniformities — so as for the ac- 
ceptance of the former to exclude the notion of the latter — can 
only arise either from an unworthy conception of the Deity as 
an arbitrary and capricious ruler, or from an unphilosophical 
conception of the real meaning of science as the intellectual 
interpretation of nature. It is on the highest , not on the lowest ,. 
form of Human Will that we should base our ideas of the 
Divine — upon such a will as sets before it a great and good 
object, steadily perseveres in the course that leads towards its 
accomplishment, shapes its mode of operation by the best of its 
limited foreknowledge, is not discouraged by temporary fail- 
ures, and finally succeeds because the means employed were, 
on the whole , adapted to bring about the result. Now,’ if the 
Foreknowledge be infinite, there will be no failures, because all 
fruitless efforts will be prevented by the prevision of the ade- 
quacy of the means. And if the Power be infinite, there will 
be no limitation of choice, except as to the means which will 
best conduce to the end in view. 

Hence, there is a perfect conformity between the scientific 
idea of u Law,” as expressive of uniformity of action, and the 
theological idea of “ Will ” exerting itself with a fixed purpose 
according to a predetermined plan; and of the existence of 
such a plan, the Eevelations of Science furnish Theology with 
its best evidence. — Dr. Wm. B. Carpenter : Mental Physiology ,, 
p. 703. 

We Draw Conclusions from Our Observations of God.— Look- 
ing at the Deity, finally, in his relation to His human offspring, 
we draw a like conclusion from the best results of our own 
limited experience. For, if a loving father had foreknowledge 
enough to form at the outset, all his future plans for the educa- 
tion of his children, and wisdom enough to adapt these plans 
in the best possible manner to their respective characters as 
progressively developed, and to all the conditions in which they 
may hereafter find themselves, and power enough to carry 
these plans into operation, so that the course of events would 
not require the alteration of one tittle in their fulfillment — 


46 


GOD. 


surely, this would be a far more perfect manifestation of a 
paternal character than the continual change in his schemes 
which the human parent is usually obliged to make, in order to 
adapt them to the purpose he has in view. — Dr, Wm, B. Car- 
penter: Mental Physiology , 706. 

In Nature Thought Appeals to Thought,— What, indeed, have we 
found by moving out along all radii into the Infinite ? That 
the whole is woven together in one sublime tissue of intellec- 
tual relations, geometric and physical — the realized original, of 
which all our science is but the partial copy. That science is 
the crowning product and supreme expression of human reason. 
* * * Unless, therefore, it takes more mental faculty to 
construe a universe than to cause it, to read the book of 
nature than to write it, we must more than ever look upon its 
sublime face as the living appeal of thought to thought. — Dr, 
James Martineau, 

Spirits Possess Power and Celerity.— If God be a Spirit, he is 
active and communicative. He is not clogged with heavy and 
sluggish matter, which is cause of dulness and inactivity. The 
more subtle, thin and approaching nearer the nature of a 
spirit anything is, the more diffusive it is. Air is a gliding sub- 
stance: spreads itself through all regions, pierceth into all 
bodies ; it fills the space between heaven and earth ; there is 
nothing but partakes of the virtue of it. Light, which is an 
emblem of spirit, insinuates itself into all places, refresheth all 
things. As spirits are fuller, so they are more overflowing, 
more piercing, more operative than bodies. The Egyptian 
horses were weak things, because they were “flesh and not 
spirit.” The soul being a spirit, conveys more to the body 
than the body can to it. What cannot so great a Spirit do for 
us ? God, being a Spirit above all spirits, can pierce into the 
center of all spirits : make his way into the most secret re- 
ceses : stamp what he pleases. It is no more to Him to turn 
our spirits than to make a wilderness become waters, and speak 
a chaos into a beautiful frame of heaven and earth. He can 
act our souls with infinite more ease than our souls can act 
our bodies ; he can fix in us what motions, frames, inclinations 
he pleases ; he can come and settle in our hearts with all his 
treasures. It is an encouragement to confide in Him, when we 
petition Him for spiritual blessings; as He is a Spirit, He is 


GOD. 


47 


possessed with spiritual blessings. A spirit delights to be- 
stow things suitable to its nature, as bodies do to communicate 
what is agreeable to theirs. As he is the Father of spirits, we 
may go to him for the welfare of our spirits. He being a 
Spirit, is as able to repair our spirits as he was to create them. 
As he is a Spirit, he is indefatigable in acting. The members 
of the body tire and flag : but who ever heard of a weary 
angel ? In the purest simplicity, there is the greatest power, 
the most efficacious goodness, the most reaching justice to 
affect the spirit, that can insinuate itself everywhere to punish 
wickedness without weariness, as well as to comfort goodness. 
God is active, because He is Spirit; and if we be like to God, 
the more spiritual we arre, the more active we shall be. — Char- 
noek on the Attributes : Vol. 1, 201. 

Dangerous to Sever the Creator from the Creature. — The dan- 
ger to which we are most exposed is that of severing the Cre- 
ator from His creatures. The propensity of human sovereigns 
to cut off communication between themselves and their sub- 
jects, and to disclaim a common nature with their inferiors, 
has led the multitude of men, who think of God chiefly under 
the character of a King, to conceive of Him as a Being who 
places His glory in multiplying distinctions between Himself 
and all other beings. The truth is, that the union between the 
Creator and the creature surpasses all other bonds in strength 
and intimacy. He penetrates all things, and delights to irrad- 
iate all with His glory. Nature, in all its lowest and inanimate 
forms, is pervaded by His power : and when quickened by the 
mysterious property of life, how wonderfully does it show 
forth the perfections of its Author ! How much of God may 
be seen in the structure of a single leaf, which, though so frail 
as to tremble in every wind, yet holds connections and living 
communications with the earth, the air, the clouds, and the dis- 
tant sun, and, through these sympathies with the universe, is 
itself a revelation of an omnipotent mind ! God delights to 
diffuse Himself everywhere. Through His energy, uncon- 
scious matter clothes itself with proportions, powers and 
beauties, which reflect His wisdom and love. How much 
more must He delight to frame conscious and happy re- 
cipients of His perfections, in whom His wisdom and love may 
substantially dwell, with whom He may form spiritualities, and 
to whom He may be an everlasting spring of moral energy and 


48 


GOD. 


happiness! How far ^he Supreme Being may communicate 
His attributes to His intelligent offspring, I stop not to in- 
quire. But that His Almighty goodness will impart to them 
powers and glories, of which the material universe is but a 
faint emblem, I cannot doubt. That the soul, if true to itself 
and its Maker, will be filled with God, and will manifest Him 
more than the sun, I cannot doubt. Who can doubt it, that 
believes and understands the doctrine of human immortality ? 
— Charming : page 295. 

God the Eternal Worker. — Just here, the view we are advancing 
is seen to have an immense practical as well as speculative con- 
sequence. It finds how to conceive God in a state of as great 
activity now, as He was when He made the world — always 
active, from eternity to eternity. Every work of His hand is 
pliant still to His counsel. He is doing something, able to do 
all we want. In all events and changes He has a present con- 
cern. He turns about not the clouds only, but all the wheels 
of nature, by His ever-living power and government. He is an 
Agent, as much more real than nature, as He is wider in His 
reach and more sovereign. He can produce variant results 
through invariable causes, and so can make the world of things 
keep company with the variant demands of want, weakness, 
wickedness and merit; of love, truth, justice, and holy suppli- 
cation, in His children. It is no longer as if, at some given 
point in the solitude of His eternity, He waked up and created 
the worlds, since which time He has neither done nor can be 
expected to do anything more, because it is the right now of 
the laws of nature to do everything uninterrupted. Contrary 
to this, He is the Living God, and can as readily meet us and 
bend Himself and His works to our condition or request, as a 
man, without any infringement of his body, can bend it to his 
uses. Nature is seen to be subjected to His constant agency 
by its laws themselves, which laws He has never to suspend, 
but only to employ, having the great realm of nature flexible as 
a hand, to His will forever. Now He is no more fenced away 
from us by nature, no more closeted behind it, to sleep away 
His deaf and idle eternity ; but He is with us, and about us, fill- 
ing all things with His potent energy and fatherly counsel. He 
maintains a relationship as real and practical with us, as we have 
with each other. — Bushnell : Nature and Supernatural , p. 260. 


GOD. 


4£> 


God Only a Groat Mechanic. — The author of the Vestiges of 
Creation looks on cause and effect as being the eternal will of 
God, and nature as the all-comprehensive order of His provi- 
dence, besides which, or apart from which, he does, and can be 
supposed to do, nothing. A great many who call themselves 
Christian believers, really hold the same thing, and can suffer 
nothing different. Nature to such includes man. God and 
nature, then, are the all of existence, and there is no acting of 
God upon nature ; for that would be supernaturalism. He may 
be the originative source of nature ; he may even be the imme- 
diate, all-impelling will, of which cause and effect are the symp- 
toms ; that is, he may have made, and may actuate the machine,, 
in that fated, fore doomed way which cause and effect describes, 
but he must not act upon the machine-system outside of the 
fore-doomed way. If he does, he will disturb the immutable 
laws ! In fact, he has no liberty of doing anything, but just to 
keep agoing the everlasting trundle of the machine. He can- 
not even act upon his works, save as giving and maintaining 
the natural law of his works, which law is a limit upon Him, as 
truly as a bond of order upon them. He is incrusted and shut 
in by his own ordinances. Nature is the god above God, and 
he cannot cross her confines. His ends are all in nature, for r 
outside of nature, and beyond, there is nothing but Himself. 
He is only a great mechanic, who has made a great machine for 
the sake of the machine, having his work all done long ages 
ago. 

Virtues More than the Rolling of a Vast Machine.— Moral gov- 
ernment is out of the question — there is no government 
but the predestined rolling of the machine. If a man sins, 
the sin is only the play of cause and effect : that is,, 
of the machine. If he repents, the same is true — sin, repent- 
ance, love, hope, joy, are all developments of cause and effect: 
that is, of the machine. If a soul gives itself to God in love,, 
the love is but a grinding-out of some wheel he has setturning r 
or it may be turns, in the scheme of nature. If I look up to 
Him and call Him Father, he can only pity the conceit of my 
filial feeling, knowing that it is attributable to nothing but the 
run of mere necessary cause and effect in me, and is no more, 
in fact, from me than the rising of a mist or cloud is from some 
buoyant freedom in its particles. If I look up to Him for help 
and deliverance, He can only hand me over to cause and effect, 
D 


50 


GOD. 


of which I am a link myself, and bid me stay in my place to be 
what I am made to be. He can touch me by no extension of 
sympathy, and I must even break through nature (as He him- 
self cannot) to obtain a look of recognition. 

Existence a Frightful Desert so Interpreted. — How miserable a 
desert is existence, both to Him and to us, under such condi- 
tions — to Him, because of His character ; to us, because of our 
wants. To be thus entombed in His works, to have no scope 
for his virtues, no field for his perfections, no ends to seek, no 
liberty to act, save in the mechanical way of mere causality 
what could more effectually turn His goodness into a well- 
spring of baffled desires and defeated sympathies, and make 
His glory itself a baptism of sorrow? Meantime the supposi- 
tion is, to us, a mockery, against which all our deepest wants 
and highest personal affinities are raised up, as it were, in muti- 
nous protest. If there is nothing but God and nature, and God 
himself has no relations to nature, save just to fill it and keep it 
on its way, then, being ourselves a part of nature, we are only 
a link, each one, in a chain let down into a well, where nothing 
else can ever touch us but the next link above. O, it is horri- 
ble ! Our soul freezes at the thought ! We want, we must 
have, something better — a social footing, a personal, and free, 
and flexible, and conscious relation with our God: that He 
should cross over to us, or bring us over the dark Styx of 
nature unto Himself, to love Him, to obtain His recognition, to 
receive His manifestation, to walk in His guidance, and be raised 
to that higher footing of social understanding and spiritual con- 
course with Him, where our inborn affinities find their centre 
and rest. And what we earnestly want, we know that we shall 
assuredly find. The prophecy is in us, and whether we call 
ourselves prophets or not, we shall certainly go on to publish 
it. It is the inevitable, first fact of natural conviction with us. 
Do we not know, each one, that he is more than a thing or a 
wheel, and, being consciously a man, a spirit, a creature super- 
natural, will he hesitate to claim a place with such, and claim 
for such a place ? — Bushnell : Nature and Supernatural, p. 60 . 

Term God Includes Everything Else. — The Supreme revelation 
that is made in the Bible is the revelation of God. Everything 
else belongs to the region of detail. The Divine Personality is 
the vital and all-embracing revelation. Creation may suggest it ; 


GOD. 


51 


the curious interweaving and combination of daily events may 
point towards it as towards a possiblity ; but the Bible distinctly 
Teveals it as the secret of all things. But the Bible having 
made this revelation cannot stop there. The term God includes 
all other terms. It is not a high symbol in abstract reasoning, 
or the almost aerial line which the metaphysician is content to 
begin with; it is the all-controlling factor in regions visible and 
invisible — it is this or it is nothing. — Dr. Parker : Paraclete , p. 24. 

God is the Ever Near. — “ I know that my Redeemer liveth.” 
The first truth contained in that is God’s personal existence. 
It is not chance nor fate which sits at the wheel of this world’s 
revolutions. It was no fortuitous concourse of atoms which 
massed themselves into a world of beauty. It was no accidental 
train of circumstances which have brought the human race to 
their present state. It was a living God. And it is just so far 
as this is the conviction of every day, and every hour, and 
every minute, “ My Redeemer liveth,” that one man deserves 
to be called more religious than another. To be religious is to 
feel that God is the Ever Near. It is to go through life with 
this thought coming instinctively and unbidden — “ Thou God, 
seest me.” A life of religion is a life of faith ; and faith is that 
strange faculty by which man feels the presence of the invis- 
ible, exactly as some animals have the power of seeing in the 
dark. That is the difference between the Christian and the 
world. Most men know nothing beyond what they see. Their 
lovely world is all in all to them : its outer beauty — not its 
Ridden loveliness. Prosperity — struggle — sadness — it is all 
the same. They struggle through it alone, and when old age 
comes, and the companions of early days are gone, they feel 
that they are solitary. In all this strange, deep world, they 
never meet : or but for a moment, the Spirit of all, who stands 
at their very side. And it is exactly the opposite of this that 
makes a Christian. Move where he will, there is a thought and 
a Presence which he cannot put aside. He is haunted forever 
by the Eternal Mind. God looks out upon him from the clear 
sky, and through the thick darkness, is present in the rain-drop 
that trickles down the branches, and in the tempest that 
crashes through the forest. A living Redeemer stands beside 
him, goes with him, talks with him, as a man with a friend. — 
F. W. Robertson : Vol. 1, page 182. 


CREATION 


UESTlONS Concerning Creation. — What is the origin of the uni- 



verse? Whence came those far off planets and stars? 


Whence came this earth, these mountains, and oceans, and rocks, 
and molecules, and atoms ? What is the origin of things ? It is, 
perhaps, the sublimest question mortal man can ask. Accord- 
ing as it is answered, you have unspeakable consequences; 
either a God and the possibility of a blissful immortality, or no 
God at all, and the annihilation of religion itself. Do not 
imagine, then, that this question of origin of the universe is 
only a secular, or scientific question. It is profoundly the 
religious question, going down to the very roots of truth, and 
science, and theology, and character, and worship. Moreover, 
it is a question which thoughtful men are everywhere asking, 
and this, too, with an unprecedented intensity. It is the stu- 
pendous problem of the thinking world of to-day. Neither 
imagine that it is being asked only in yonder scientific cloisters \ 
it is being asked in your marts, and by your firesides. And 
the dreadful answer which you, O ! Christian, are fondly dream- 
ing is confined to a few philosophers and avowed atheists, is, a»s 
a matter of fact, being openly installed in many of your scien- 
tific institutions, and is subtly gliding into your universities 
and academies, your clubs and workshops, aye, your very 
churches themselves. — Boardman : Studies in the Creative Week* 
The Creation Determines the Faith of all Other Miracles.— Believe 
in that first of all miracles, the miracle of Creation, and you 
can believe in the miracles of Incarnation, Resurrection, As- 
cension, Parousia. This word — faith — then, is the motto in- 
scribed on the very threshold of the temple of Truth. The 
very first question in philosophy is this : What is the origin of 
things ? The very first statement of the Bible is an answer to 
this question ; an answer simple, unequivocal, exhaustive, ma- 
jestic. Thus, the very first summons of the God of Nature to 
the student of His works, is a summons to an act of faith. And 
to him who honestly obeys that summons, creation shall prove 


CREATION. 


53 


to be in every deed an Apocalypse of Deity ; and so of Duty. 
— Boardman : Studies in the Creative Week. 

An Exegesis of Gen, i : 1. — u In the beginning had God created 
the heavens and the earth.” This great introductory sentence 
of the book of God is equal in weight to the whole of its subse- 
quent communications concerning the kingdom of nature. 

It assumes the existence of God ; for it is He who in the be- 
ginning creates. It assumes his eternity ; for He is before all 
"things ; and as nothing comes from nothing, He himself must 
have always been. It implies His omnipotence ; for he creates 
"the universe of things. It implies His absolute freedom ; for 
He begins a new course of action. It implies His infinite wis- 
dom ; for a Cosmos , an order of matter and mind, can only come 
from a being of absolute intelligence. It implies His essential 
goodness ; for the Sole, Eternal, Almighty, All-wise and All- 
sufficient Being has no reason, no motive, and no capacity for 
evil. It presumes Him to be beyond all limit of time and place ; 
as He is before all time and place. 

What It Assumes and Asserts. — It asserts the creation of the 
heavens and the earth : that is, of the universe of mind and 
matter. This creating is the omnipotent act of giving existence 
"to things which before had no existence. This is the first great 
mystery of things ; as the end is the second. Natural science 
observes things as they are, when they have already laid hold 
of existence. It ascends into the past as far as observation 
will reach, and penetrates into the future as far as experience 
will guide. But it does not touch the beginning or the end. 
This first sentence of revelation, however, records the begin- 
ning. At the same time it involves the progressive develop- 
ment of that which is begun, and so contains within its bosom 
"the whole of what is revealed in the book of God. It is thus 
historical of the beginning, and prophetical of the whole of 
time. It is, therefore, equivalent to all the rest of revelation 
"taken together, which merely records the evolutions of one 
sphere of creation, and nearly and more nearly anticipates the 
^nd of present things. 

This sentence assumes the being of God, and asserts the be- 
ginning of things. Hence, it intimates that the existence of God 
is more immediately patent to the reason of man than the crea- 
tion of the universe. And this is agreeable to the philosophy 


54 


CREATION. 


of tilings ; for the existence of God is a necessary and eternal 
truth, more and more self-evident to the intellect as it rises* 
to maturity. But the beginning of things is, by its very nature, 
a contingent event, which once was not and then came to be 
contingent on the free will of the Eternal, and, therefore, not evi- 
dent to reason itself, but made known to the understanding by 
testimony and the reality of things. This sentence is the testi- 
mony, and the actual world in us and around us is the reality. 
Faith takes account of the one, observation of the other. 

Written by Man and for Man. — It bears on the very face of it 
the indication that it was written by man, and for man ; for it 
divides all things into the heavens and the earth. Such a divis- 
ion evidently suits those only who are inhabitants of the earth. 
Accordingly, this sentence is the foundation-stone of the history, 
not of the universe at large, of the sun, of any other planet, but 
of the earth, and of man its rational inhabitant. The primeval 
event which it records may be far distant, in point of time r 
from the next event in such a history ; as the earth may have 
existed myriads of ages, and undergone many vicissitudes in its. 
condition, before it became the home of the human race. And, 
for aught we know, the history of other planets, even of the 
solar system, may yet be unwritten, because there has been as 
yet no rational inhabitant to compose or peruse the record. 
We have no intimation of the interval of time that elapsed be- 
tween the beginning of things narrated in this prefatory sentence 
and that state of things which is announced in the following 
verse . 

Dictated by Superhuman Knowledge.— With no less clearness* 
however, does it show that it was dictated by superhuman 
knowledge : for it records the beginning of things of which 
natural science can take no cognizance. Man observes certain 
laws of nature, and, guided by these, may trace the current of 
physical events backwards and forwards, but without being 
able to fix any limit to the course of nature in either direction. 
And not only this sentence, but the main part of this and the 
following chapter communicates events that occurred before 
man made his appearance on the stage of things : and there- 
fore before he could either witness or record them. And in 
harmony with all this, the whole volume is proved by the top- 
ics chosen, the revelations made, the views entertained, the 


CREATION. 


55 


ends contemplated, and tlie means of information possessed, 
to be derived from a higher source than man. 

What It Denies. — This simple sentence denies atheism : for it 
assumes the being of God. It denies polytheism, and, among 
its various forms, the doctrine of two eternal principles — the 
one good and the other evil : for it confesses the one Eternal 
Creator. It denies materialism : for it asserts the creation of 
matter. It denies pantheism : for it assumes the existence of 
God before all things, and apart from them. It denies fatal- 
ism : for it involves the freedom of the Eternal Being. 

It indicates the relative superiority, in point of magnitude, 
of the heavens to the earth, by giving the former the first place 
in the order of words. It is thus in accordance with the first 
elements of astronomical science. 

It is, therefore, pregnant with physical and metaphysical, 
with ethical and theological instruction for the first man, for 
the predecessors and contemporaries of Moses, and for all the 
succeeding generations of mankind. 

The Verse an Integral Part and Not a Heading. — This verse forms 
an integral part of the narrative, and not a mere heading, as 
som e have imagined. This is abundantly evident, from the follow- 
ing reasons : 1. It has the form of a narrative, not of a super- 
scription. 2. The conjunctive particle connects the second 
verse with it, which could not be if it were a heading. 3. The 
very next sentence speaks of the earth as already in existence, 
and, therefore, its creation must be recorded in the first verse. 
4. In the first verse the heavens take precedence of the earth ; 
but in the following verses, all things, even the sun, moon and 
stars, seem to be but appendages to the earth. Thus, if it were 
a heading, it would not correspond with the narrative. 5. If 
the first verse belong to the narrative, order pervades the whole 
recital ; whereas, if it be a heading, the most hopeless confu- 
sion enters. Light is called into being before the sun, moon 
and stars. The earth takes precedence of the heavenly lumin- 
aries. The stars, which are co-ordinate with the sun, and pre- 
ordinate to the moon, occupy the third place in the narrative of 
their manifestation. For any, or all of these reasons, it is ob- 
vious that the first verse forms a part of the narrative. 

As soon as it is settled that the narrative begins in the first 
verse, another question comes up for determination, namely : 


56 


CREATION. 


whether the heavens here mean the heavenly bodies that circle 
in their courses through the realms of space, or the mere space 
itself which they occupy with their perambulations. 

What Docs the Word “Heavens” Mean? — It is manifest that the 
heavens here denote the heavenly orbs themselves — the celes- 
tial mansions with their existing inhabitants — for the following 
cogent reasons: 1. Creation implies something created, and 
not mere space, which is nothing, and cannot be said to be 
created. 2. As the earth here obviously means the substance 
of the planet we inhabit, so, by parity of reasoning, the heavens 
must mean the substance of the celestial luminaries, the heaven- 
ly hosts of stars and spirits. 3. The heavens are placed before 
the earth, and, therefore, must mean that reality which is greater 
than the earth ; for if they meant space, and nothing real, they 
ought not to be before the earth. 4. The heavens are actually 
mentioned in the verse, and, therefore, must mean a real thing; 
for if they meant nothing at all, they ought not to be mentioned. 
5. The heavens must denote the heavenly realities, because 
this imparts a rational order to the whole chapter ; whereas, an 
unaccountable derangement appears if the sun, moon and stars 
do not come into existence till the fourth day, though the sun 
is the center of light and the measurer of the daily period. For 
any or all of these reasons, it is undeniable that the heavens in 
the first verse mean the fixed and planetary orbs of space ; 
and, consequently, that these uncounted tenants of the skies, 
along with our own planet, are all declared to be in existence 
before the commencement of the six days* creation. 

The Conclusion. — Hence, it appears that the first verse records 
an event antecedent to those described in the subsequent 
verses. This is the absolute and aboriginal creation of the 
heavens, and all that in them is, and of the earth, in its prim- 
eval state. The former includes all those resplendent spheres 
which are spread before the wondering eye of man, as well as 
those hosts of planets; and of spiritual and angelic beings 
which are beyond the range of his natural vision. This brings 
a simple and unforced meaning out of the whole chapter, and 
discloses a beauty and a harmony in the narrative which no 
other interpretation can afford. In this way the subsequent 
verses reveal a new effort of creative power, by which the pre- 
adamite earth, in the condition in which it appears in the sec- 


CREATION. 


57 


ond'verse, is fitted up for tlie residence of a fresh animal cre- 
ation, including the human race. The process is represented 
as it would appear to primeval man in his infantile simplicity, 
with whom his position would naturally be the fixed point to 
which everything else was to be referred.— Dr. J. O. Murphy : 
Commentary on Genesis , pages 28-32. 

[The above we look upon as the exegetical master-piece of commen- 
tators, and we give it, not only for the valuable ideas set forth concern- 
ing the creation, but as a sample of good Biblical work. — Ed .] 

Full Plants Created, and not Seeds or Germs.— It appears from 
the text that the full plants, and not the seeds, germs, or roots, 
were created. The land sent forth grass, herb, tree, each in its 
fully developed form. This was absolutely necessary, if man 
and the land animals were to be sustained by grasses, seeds 
and fruits. 

Thus the land begins to assume the form of beauty and fer- 
tility. Its bare and rough soil is set with the germs of an incip- 
ient verdure. It has already ceased to be u a waste.” And 
now, at the end of this third day, let us pause to review the 
natural order in which everything has been thus far done. It 
was necssary to produce light in the first place, because with- 
out this potent element water could not pass into vapor, and 
Tise on the wings of the buoyant air into the region above the 
expanse. The atmosphere must in the next place be reduced 
to order, and charged with its treasures of vapor, before the 
plants could commence the process of growth, even though 
stimulated by the influence of light and heat. Again, the 
waters must be withdrawn from a portion of the solid surface 
before the plants could be placed in the ground, so as to have 
the full benefit of the light, air and vapor in enabling them to 
draw from the soil the sap by which they are to be nourished. 
When all these conditions are fulfilled, then the plants them- 
selves are called into existence, and the first cycle of the new 
creation is completed. 

The Time Taken. — Could not the Eternal have accomplished 
all this in one day? Doubtless He might. He might have 
effected it all in an instant of time. And He might have com- 
pressed the growth and development of centuries into a 
moment. He might even by possibility have constructed the 
stratifications of the earth’s crust, with all tbe ; r slips, eleva- 


58 


CREATION. 


tions, depressions, unconformities and organic formations, in a 
day. And, lastly, He might have carried on to completion all 
the evolutions of universal nature that have since taken place 
or will hereafter take place till the last hour has struck on the 
clock of time. But what then? What purpose would have 
been served by all this speed ? It is obvious that the above 
and such like questions are not wisely put. The very nature of 
the Eternal shows the futility of such speculations. Is the 
commodity of time so scarce with Him that He must or should 
for any good reason sum up the course of a universe of things 
in an infinitesimal portion of its duration ? May we not, rather, 
must we not, soberly conclude that there is a due proportion 
between the action and the time of the action, the creation to 
be developed and the time of development. Both the begin- 
ning and the process of this latest creation are to a nicety ad- 
justed to the pre-existent and concurrent state of things. And 
the development of that which is created not only displays a 
mutual harmony and exact coincidence in the progress of all its 
other parts, but is at the same time finely adapted to the con- 
stitution of man, and the natural, safe and healthy ratio of his 
physical and metaphysical movements. — Dr. J. G . Murphy: 
Ibid , 51-2. 

Writer Marks Only Obvious Results. — The sacred writer notes 
only obvious results, such as come before the eye of the ob- 
server, and leaves the secondary causes, their modes of opera- 
tion, and their less obtrusive effects, to scientific inquiry. Th& 
progress of observation is from the foreground to the back- 
ground of nature, from the physical to the metaphysical, and 
from the objective to the subjective. Among the senses, too, 
the eye is the most prominent observer in the scenes of the six 
days. Hence the u lights/ 7 they “ shine, 77 they are for “ signs 77 
and “days 77 which are in the first instance objects of vision. 
They are “ given, 77 held or shown forth in the heavens. Even 
u rule 77 has probably the primitive meaning to be over. Starting 
thus with the visible and the tangible, the Scripture in its suc- 
cessive communications advance with us to the inferential, the 
intuitive, the moral, the spiritual, the divine. 

The sacred writer also touches merely the heads of things in 
these scenes of creation, without condescending to minute par- 
ticulars or intending to be exhaustive. Hence, many actual in- 
cidents and intricacies of these days are left to the well-regu- 


CREATION. 


59 


lated imagination and sober judgment of tbe reader. To 
instance such omissions, tbe moon is as much of her time above 
the horizon during the day as during the night. But she is not 
the conspicuous object in the scene, or the full-robed reflector of 
the solar beams, as she is during the night. Here the better 
part is used to mark the whole. The tidal influence of the 
great lights, in which the moon plays the chief part, is also un- 
noticed. Hence, we are to expect very many phenomena to be 
altogether omitted, though interesting and important in them- 
selves, because they do not come within the present scope of 
the narrative. 

Writer’s View-Point. — The point from which the writer views 
the scene is never to be forgotten, if we would understand 
these ancient records. He stands on earth. He uses his eyes 
as the organ of observation. He knows nothing of the visual 
angle, of visible as distinguishable from tangible magnitude, of 
relative in comparison with absolute motion on the grand scale ; 
he speaks the simple language of the eye. Hence, his earth is 
the meet counterpart of the heavens. His sun and moon are 
great, and all the stars are a very little thing. Light comes to 
be, to him, when it reaches the eye. The luminaries are held 
forth in the heavens, when the mist between them and the eye 
is dissolved. 

Sees with Eye of Reason. — Yet, though not trained to scientific 
thought or speech, this author has the eye of reason open, as 
well as that of sense. It is not with Him the science of the 
tangible, but the philosophy of the intuitive, that reduces 
things to their proper dimensions. He traces not the second- 
ary cause, but ascends at one glance to the great first cause, 
the manifest act and audible behest of the Eternal Spirit. This 
imparts a sacred dignity to His style, and a transcendent gran- 
deur to His conceptions. In the presence of the high and 
lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, all things terrestrial and 
celestial are reduced to a common level. Man in intelligent 
relation with God comes forth as the chief figure on 
the scene of terrestrial creation. The narrative takes its 
commanding position as the history of the ways of God with 
man. The commonest primary facts of ordinary observation, 
when recorded in this book, assume a supreme interest as the 
monuments of eternal wisdom and the heralds of the finest and 


60 


CREATION. 


broadest generalizations of a consecrated science. The very 
words are instinct with a germinant philosophy, and prove 
themselves adequate to the expression of the loftiest specula- 
tions of the eloquent mind. — Dr. J. G. Murphy : Ibid, 56-8. 

[Such wise and reverent views of Moses will do more to undo Inger- 
sollism than a legion of arguments, — Ed.~\ 

Object of Writer in Describing Creation.— He who made one 
world in space, made all worlds in space. He who made one 
world in time, made all worlds in time. He who gave matter 
its forms, gave it its origination, or that which is the ground of 
all its forms. 

These truths are so inseparably linked together by the laws 
of our thinking, that the revelation of one is the revelation of the 
rest ; since we cannot believe one speculatively without believing 
all the rest, or deny one logically without losing our faith in all the 
rest. Whatever view, then, a true exegesis may most favor — 
whether the account in Genesis be found to have in view, mainly 
or solely, a universal or a partial creation, whether the principi- 
um there mentioned be the particular beginning of the special 
work there described, or the principium principiorum, the be- 
ginning of all beginnings — the Bible is, in either case, a protest 
against the dogma of the eternity of the world, or of the eter- 
nity of matter. In the fact clearly revealed and believed that 
a personal divine power was concerned in the creation, even of 
a plant, we have the essential faith. As a dogma merely, the 
great truth might have been here expressed in a single sen- 
tence : 11 God made all things to be, and without Him there 
was nothing made that is” — even as it is given to us in John i : 2. 
Why then this most graphic and detailed account of the 
creative work ? It is the same design, we answer, that appears 
in the other historical revelations that are made to us in the 
Scripture. It is to impress us with the glory of the Creator, 
to make the thought something more than a speculative belief, 
to give it strength and vividness so as to become a living power 
in our souls. Whatever exegesis has the greatest tendency to 
do this, is most likely to be true in itself, and is the most favor- 
able to the absolute verity. * * * * * 

Dogmatism Out of Place in Our Interpretations.— It may be ad- 
mitted that the author of the account in Genesis probably re- 
garded himself as describing the creation of the all , since to his 


CREATION. 


61 


knowledge our immediate earth and heaven, with the phenome- 
nal luminaries appearing as fixed in it, and belongingto it, were 
the all ; but that he meant to tell us of the first matter, even of 
this, or its coming out of nothing, cannot be certainly deter- 
mined by any etymology of words, or by any infallible exegesis 
of the passage. There are certainly some things that look the 
other way. The implication, however, of the great fact is 
enough for us, even though the bare words of Moses might be 
thought to confine themselves to a more limited sphere. So 
Lange holds to the creation in the Bible being the absolute first 
origination, yet, from some things he has said, he seems to be 
content with the idea last mentioned as answering the theologi- 
cal inquiry, without enlarging the words in Genesis by any 
exegetical strain which they may not be able to bear. This is 
shown particularly in what he says (p. 165) about “the earth- 
light, or the earth becoming light,” as being the analogue where- 
in is presented the primal origination of light, just as in the 
creation of man there is symbolized the creation of a spirit- 
world collectively. The argument or implication is : He who 
made light to be at one place or time, made it to be at all times, 
even at that time which was the absolute beginning of its ex- 
istence ; He who made the human spirit must have made all 
spirit, whether coeval with or immeasurably more ancient than 
man. 

Since, then, it is very difficult to make the fair verbal exegesis 
speak decidedly either way, may we not infer from this that 
we overrate the importance of one aspect of the question as 
compared with the other. Besides the clear implication afore- 
said, which would make the recognition of a structural creation 
at some particular time inseparable from the recognition of an 
absolute first origination of matter in its own time or times, 
there may be a question as to which is really the greater work, 
or more worthy of revelation, or which ought to have the 
greatest place in our minds — this bare origination of the first 
matter, or the giving form to that matter. The first, many 
would say, unhesitatingly ; the second, they would regard as 
the lower, the less important, the less manifestive of the divine 
power and glory, or, in a word as the easier work. Our phil- 
osophical thinking, in which we so much pride ourselves, and 
which we would fain ascribe to God, whose “ ways are so far 
above our ways, and His thoughts above our thoughts,” leads 


62 


CREATION. 


to this. It is favored by certain metaphysical notions which 
are not recognized, or but little recognized, in the usual style 
of the Scriptures. This first matter, hyle, force, heat, nebular 
fluid, world-dust, call it what we will, goes beyond all our 
sense-conceptions, and, therefore, we think it must be some- 
thing greater, more important, more difficult, requiring more 
of power and wisdom, and therefore higher in the divine esti- 
mation, than that informing, structural, architectural, idealizing, 
systematizing, developing work which builds up, and builds 
out, this first matter, force, etc., into glorious forms for the 
contemplation, and magnificent worlds for the indwelling of 
rational, spiritual beings. If we do not greatly mistake, both 
the style and the manifested interest of the Scriptures are the 
other way. 

Bible Does Not Talk like Plato about Creation.— The Bible does 
not talk to us like Plato, of the hyle, the mother of matter, 
the substance that has none of the properties of matter, yet is 
capable of receiving them all, or of matter itself as something 
distinct from body ; it does not speak to us in the language of 
Aristotle about the first motion, the first mover, and the first 
moved, nor does it, after the more modern manner, have much 
to say of the first cause and the first causation, throwing all 
causality after it into the inferior place, or burying it in a 
godless nature. On the other hand, its high design is to im- 
press us with the superior greatness of this latter outbuilding 
(Ephe. iii : 9 ; Heb. xi : 3) as the peculiar work of the Logos, or 
Word, which gives form and life, and, in this sense, its higher or 
more real being, to this conceptionless first matter, or first force. 
This was the great work, if we may judge by the importance 
the Scripture attaches to it ; this was pre-eminently the work 
of creation as carried on by the artistic Wisdom (Prov. viii : 22- 
32), and to this well corresponds what is said (Johni: 3, 4) 
according to the old patristic division and interpretation of 
the passage “that which was 'made (or originated) in Him was 
life n — because life in Him. It is easy to see what is promi- 
nent in the Bible. It is not God the first motion, or the first 
force, or the first cause, or even as the originator of force and 
matter, but God the Great Architect ; this is the idea which 
the Scripture language aims to impress so as to make it a 
living and controlling power in the soul, giving life and value 
to the other ideas, and preventing them from becoming mere 


CREATION. 


63 


scientific abstractions, on the one hand, or dead naturalistic 
or pantheistic notions on the other. The abstract notion is 
ever assumed in the Bible as included in its creative represen 
tations, whilst it makes vivid the other and greater thought as 
the quickening power of all personal theistic conceptions. 

Our Only Notion of Matter. — The only notion we can form of 
matter in its lowest or primal entity is that of resistance in 
space, or the furnishing bare sensation to a supposed sentiency, 
without anything beyond it, either as form for the intellect, or 
as qualifying variety for the sense. The manner of putting this 
forth, we may not know, but that does not give it the higher 
rank. Taken as a fact, it is the lowest thing in the scale of the 
divine works, if we may be allowed to make any relative com- 
parisons among them. It is simply an exercise of the divine 
strength. On the other hand, the giving form to matter, which 
is so clearly and sublimely revealed as the true creative stage, 
is the work of the Divine Wisdom, and might be supposed 
worthy of God, as an exercise of His infinite intelligence, even 
if it had no other than an artistic end. The carrying these 
forms into the region of the moral, or the impressing moral de- 
signs upon them — in other words, building the world as the 
abode of life and the residence of moral and spiritual beings 
capable of witnessing and declaring the glory of the Creator — 
is the work of the Divine love. In reversing this scale of dig- 
nities, the actually lower work comes to be regarded as the 
higher and the greater, merely because it is the more remote from 
us. Nothing but some such feeling as this could have led to 
the strong desire, in modern times, of finding here a revelation 
of the metaphysical, as though this alone were creation proper, 
or as though the Divine power and wisdom were not even more 
sublimely manifested in the creative evolution and forma- 
tion of the physical. The painting is a much greater and higher 
creation than the canvass, even though the making of both were 
admitted as belonging to the same artist.— Prof. Tayler Lewis : 
Lange's Commentary on Genesis , pp. 126-9. 

[Prof. Murphy and Prof. Lewis, being master antagonists on this 
theme, but both scholarly and liberal in their views, we let each repre- 
sent a phase of thought as respects an aboriginal creation. We cannot 
multiply authors, ad nauseam , upon the “period ” theory and “ twen- 
ty-four hour ” theory. Nor do we think it is beneficial to do so. The 
scholars already quoted counsel liberality in view, and as neither 


64 


CREATION. 


theory is derogatory to God as a creator, for more extended discussion 
we must commend our readers to the two commentaries above men- 
tioned. Added, then, to what has already been given from Dr. M urphy , 
we now produce the strongest things he has said on “ the twenty-four 
hour ” theory, side by side with Tayler Lewis, and thus content our- 
selves. Let the reader read both sides carefully, and form a sound judg- 
ment. — Ed .] 

What Happened After a Lapse of Time.— “And the earth had be- 
come a waste and a void, and darkness was upon the face of 
the deep ; and the Spirit of God was brooding upon the face of 
the water.” After the undefined lapse of time from the first 
grand act of creation, the present verse describes the state of 
things on the land immediately antecedent to the creation of a 
new system of vegetable and animal life, and, in particular, of 
man, the intelligent inhabitant, for whom this fair scene was 
now to be fitted up and replenished. * * * Passing now 
from the subject to the verb in this sentence, we observe it is 
in the perfect state, and, therefore, denotes that the condition 
of confusion and emptiness was not in progress, but had run 
its course and become a settled thing, at least at the time of 
the next recorded event. If the verb had been absent in He- 
brew, the sentence would have been still complete, and the 
meaning as follows: “And the land was waste and void.” 
With the verb present, therefore, it must denote something 
more. The verb be has here, we conceive, the meaning become ; 
and the import of the sentence is this : “And the land had be- 
come waste and void.” This affords the presumption that the 
part at least of the surface of our globe which fell within the 
cognizance of primeval man, and first received the name of 
land, may not have been always a scene of desolation or a sea 
of turbid waters, but may have met with some catastrophe by 
which its order and fruitfulness had been marred or prevented. 

Primordial Things Finished Before the Last Creation Begins. — 

This sentence, therefore, does not necessarily describe the 
state of the land when first created, but merely intimates a 
change that may have taken place since it was called into ex- 
istence. What its previous condition was, or what interval of 
time elapsed between the absolute creation and the present 
state of things, is not revealed. How many transformations it 
may have undergone, and what purpose it may have heretofore 
served, are questions that did not essentially concern the moral 


CREATION. 


65 


well-being of man, and are, therefore, to be asked of some 
other interpreter of nature than the written word. 

This state of things is finished in reference to the event about 
to be narrated. Hence the settled condition of the land, ex- 
pressed by the predicates “ a waste and a void,” is in studied 
contrast with the order and fulness which are about to be in- 
troduced. The present verse is, therefore, to be regarded as a 
statement of the wants that have to be supplied in order to 
render the land a region of beauty and life. 

The second clause of the verse points out another striking 
characteristic of the scene : “And darkness was upon the face 
of the deep.” Here, again, the conjunction is connected with 
the noun. The time is the indefinite past, and the circumstance 
recorded is merely appended to that contained in the previous 
clause. The darkness, therefore, is connected with the dis- 
order and solitude which then prevailed on the land. It forms 
a part of the physical derangement which had taken place on 
this part, at least, of the surface of our globe. 

Pre-adamlc Scene Further Described.— It is further to be noted 
that the darkness is described to be on the face of the deep. 
Nothing is said about any other region throughout the bounds 
of existing things. The presumption is, so far as this clause 
determines, that it is a local darkness confined to the face of 
the deep. And the clause itself stands between two others 
which refer to the land, and not to any other part of occupied 
space. It cannot therefore be intended to describe anything 
beyond this definite region. 

The deep, the roaring abyss, is another feature in the pre- 
adamic scene. It is not now a region of land and water, but a 
chaotic mass of turbid waters, floating over, it may be, and 
partly laden with, the ruins of a past order of things : at all 
events not at present possessing the order of vegetable and 
animal life. ********** 

“Day ” and “ Night.” — The designations of u day ” and “ night ” 
explain to us what is the meaning of dividing the light from the 
darkness. It is the separation of the one from the other, and 
the orderly distribution of each over the different parts of Ihe 
earth’s surface in the course of a night and a day. This could 
only be effected in the space of a diurnal revolution of the 
earth on its axis. Accordingly, if light were radiated from a 

E 


66 


CREATION. 


particular region of the sky, and thus separated from darkness 
at a certain meridian, while the earth performed its daily 
round, the successive changes of evening, night, morning, day, 
would naturally present themselves in slow and stately pro- 
gress during that first great act of creation. 

Thus we have evidence that the diurnal revolution of the 
earth took place on the first day of the last creation. We 
are not told whether it occurred before that time. If ever 
there was a time when the earth did not revolve, or revolved 
on a different axis, or according to a different law from the 
present, the first revolution or change of revolution must 
have produced a vast change in the face of things, the marks 
of which would remain to this day, whether the impulse was 
communicated to the solid mass alone, or simultaneously to all 
the loose matter resting on its surface. But the text gives no 
intimation of such a change. 

At present, however, let us recollect we have only to do 
with the land known to antediluvian man, and the coming of 
light into existence over that region, according to the existing 
arrangement of day and night. How far the breaking forth of 
the light may have extended beyond the land known to the 
writer, the present narrative does not enable us to determine. 

Entrance of Light. — We are now prepared to conclude that 
the entrance of light into this darkened region was effected by 
such a change in its position, or in its superincumbent atmos- 
phere, as allowed the interchange of night and day to become 
discernible, while at the same time so much obscurity still 
remained as to exclude the heavenly bodies from view. We 
have learned from the first verse that these heavenly orbs 
were already created. The luminous element that plays so 
conspicuous and essential a part in the process of nature, 
must have formed a part of that original creation. The remo- 
val of darkness, therefore, from the locality mentioned, is 
merely owing to a new adjustment by which the pre-existent 
light was made to visit the surface of the abyss with its cheer- 
ing and enlivening beams. 

In this case, indeed, the real change is effected, not in the 
light itself, but in the intervening medium which was impervious 
to its rays. But it is to be remembered, on the other hand, 
that the actual result of the divine interposition is still the dif- 
fusion of light over the face of the watery deep, and that the 


CREATION. 


67 


actual phenomena of the change, as they would strike an on- 
looker, and not the invisible springs of the six days 7 creation, 
are described in the chapter before us. 

Then was evening , then was morning , day one . The last clause 
of the verse is a resumption of the whole process of time dur- 
ing this first work of creation. This is accordingly a simple 
and striking example of two lines of narrative parallel to each 
other and exactly coincident in respect of time. In general, we 
find the one overlapping only a part of tne other. 

When the Day Begins. — The day is described, according to the 
Hebrew mode of narrative, by its starting-point, “the even- 
ing. 77 The first half of its course is run during the night. The 
next half, in like manner, commences with “ the morning, 77 and 
goes through its round in the proper day. Then the whole 
period is described as “ one day. 77 The point of termination for 
the day is thus the evening again, which agrees with the Hebrew 
division of time. (Lev. xxiii : 32.) 

To make “the evening 77 here the end of the first day, and so 
“ the morning 77 the end of the first night, as is done by some 
interpreters, is therefore equally inconsistent with the gram- 
mar of the Hebrews and with their mode of reckoning time. It 
also defines the diurnal period, by noting first its middle point 
und then its termination, which does not seem to be natural. It 
further defines the period of sunshine, or the day proper by 
“ the evening, 77 and the night by the morning ; a proceeding 
equally unnatural. It has not even the advantage of making the 
event of the latter clause subsequent to that of the former. 
For the day of twenty-four hours is wholly spent in dividing 
the light from the darkness ; and the self-same day is described 
again in this clause, take it how we will. This interpretation 
of the clause is therefore to be rejected. 

Days of Twenty-four Hours Each. — The days of this creation 
are natural days of twenty-four hours each. We may not de- 
part from the ordinary meaning of the word without a sufficient 
warrant either in the text of Scripture or in the law of nature. 
But we have not yet found any such warrant. Only necessity 
can force us to such an expedient. Scripture, on the other 
hand, warrants us in retaining the common meaning by yielding 
no hint of another, and by introducing “evening, night, morn- 
ing, day, 77 as its ordinary divisions. Nature favors the same 


68 


CREATION. 


interpretation. All geological changes are of course subse- 
quent to the great event recorded in the first verse, which is 
the beginning of things. All such changes, except the one re- 
corded in the six days’ creation, are, with equal certainty, ante- 
cedent to the state of things described in the second verse. 
Hence, no lengthened period is required for this last creative 
interposition. — Dr. J. G. Murphy : Commentary on Genesis , pp. 
34 - 44 . 

Where Did Creation Begin? — In discussing these questions 
exegetically, much also depends on the correct interpretation 
of the substantive verb and was , in the second verse. Does 
it denote a time contemporaneous with the verb created in the 
first verse, or does it denote something succeeding, either as 
state or event — namely, that the earth and heaven, which had 
been created by a distinct and separate act there related, was 
aftencards (whether as having been left so, or as having 
become so by some cause or causes not mentioned) waste and 
void ? Or does it mean (as the Jewish authorities maintain) 
that this condition, whose time is denoted by was , was the be- 
ginning of the creation described, or the chronological date 
when this creation, called the Mosaic, began? In other words, 
can the expression “And the earth was,” denote, grammatically, 
a succeeding instead of a contemporaneous event ? * * * 

Was It All Within Six Days? — Another question arises, 
Was all the creation that Moses intends to describe 
within six days, or was that part mentioned in the 
first verse an extra day, as it must be if the six days 
chronologically began in the evening, that is, in the waste and 
void , or when darkness was upon the face of the deep ? But 
such exclusion would seem to be in the face of the express 
declaration in the fourth commandment “in six days (within 
six days) God created the heavens and the earth.” If, then, 
there was anything before the chronological beginning of the 
first day, which is so distinctly marked by its evening, it could 
not be intended here as part of this account ; for from the time 
God began this creative work (whatever it might include) until 
he rested in the evening after the sixth, there were six days, 
be they long or short, and no more. The reasoning is plain. 
The six days began with the evening of the waste , followed by 
the command for the shining of the light, which was the first 


CREATION. 


69 


act in tlie formation of the heavens and the earth afterwards 
described. If, then, the first verse denotes a beginning before 
this, it must have been outside of six days. If we would bring 
it within, then it must be regarded as caption to the whole 
account, or as a summary of the process afterwards in detail 
set forth. If it is without, then what is meant by the heavens 
and earth (especially the earth) therein mentioned ? Or it might 
be asked (and it would be very difficult to answer the question) 
what part of the first day, or how are we to get any part of the 
first day, or first night, between the created of the first verse, 
and the was of the second. 

Again, in the expression, And the earth was , it is to be noted 
that the subject stands before the verb, which makes it em- 
phatic, or is designed to call attention to it as being the very 
«ame earth mentioned before, and whose creation is now going 
to be more particularly described ; “ and as for the earth ” (or 
u but as for the earth,” as there is abundant authority for ren- 
dering the particle), “ it was so and so ” — in such a condition, 
•as though to separate it from the heavens (the earth-heavens) 
which is not created, that is, divided from the general mass, 
until the second day, when God first named it historically by 
calling the firmament heaven. 

But can we conclusively rest on such a grammatical exegesis ? 
€ertainly not. The usual law of the Hebrew tenses, though 
strongly favoring it (aided as it is by other considerations men- 
tioned), is not sufficiently fixed, and without exceptions, seem- 
ing or real, to warrant any interpreter in speaking positively 
from such data alone ; but certainly this applies with still greater 
force to those who would be dogmatically positive in maintain- 
ing the other view. Grammatical exegesis, even when most 
thoroughly pursued, may fail of reaching the absolute truth, 
for that truth may be in itself ineffable. It is, however, the 
true way, and the only way of getting at the order of the con- 
ceptions as they existed, or as they arose in the mind of the 
writer. ******** 

What Was “ Darkness.”— “And darkness was upon the face of 
the abyss.” It was formlessness in its two modes of invisi- 
bility and indivisibleness. It was an undistinguishable waste- 
ness. There was no light whereby to see, and there was a want 
of that division and separation into distinct objects without 
which there is no true visibility, even if the light were present. 


70 


CREATION. 


Darkness is nothing of itself, yet still it denotes something 
more than a mere negation or a mere absence. It indicates 
rather the obstruction of something that already is. As its He- 
brew name implies, it is a holding bade like the Latin tenebrae 
and the Greek shotos.. During all this night it was the 
obstruction of a power, or the sign of such ob- 
struction, until the brooding spirit loosed its chains 
of darkness, and the voice of the Word was heard 
commanding that power to come forth. Nothing is more 
certain than that in the Mosaic account the light there men- 
tioned comes phenomenally and historically, after the darkness,, 
and even after the water of the abyss, whether we regard it as 
gas-form or liquid-form, that is, water proper, according te 
Lange’s distinction. What a most serious difficulty is this for 
those who say that the Mosaic account in its first mention of 
light has respect to its primal original, or first being — whether 
it be the material or dynamical entity merely, or that glorious 
form of power which is called God’s garment (Ps. civ : 2), and 
in which He is said to dwell (1 Tim. vi : 16) as in an element 
most real, yet unapproachable by human vision ! Can we doubt 
that light was even then a latent power in the abyss before it 
was commanded to “ shine out of darkness,” and upon the 
darkness, and that it had existed before this earthly morning, 
and that, too, not as a formless hyle merely, or first matter, but 
in forms ineffably bright and glorious — not as a mere force or 
dynamical entity which never before had had visibility, but as 
recognized by the angels and sons of God who shouted for joy 
at this, its new form, and that first appearance upon the earth 
which God called day ? 

Point of Separation of Day and Night.— Next we have the first 
mention of the separating, form-giving power. “The Ruah 
Elohim, the Spirit of God, was brooding upon the waters.” 
Then comes the Word, and morning breaks. Light is the first 
separation. It is divided from the darkness, which shows that 
it had before existed in the “waste” and in combination with it. 
And God calls it day, whilst the former state He calls night. 
It is His own naming, and we must take it as our guide in the 
interpretation of the words. It is not any duration, but the 
phenomenon, the appearing itself, that is first called day. Then 
the term is used for a period, to denote the whole event, or the 
whole first cycle of events, with its two great antithetical parts. 


CREATION. 


71 


And lliere was an evening and there was a morning , one day . We 
look into the account to see what corresponds to this naming. 
What was the night ? Certainly the darkness on the face of the 
waters. What was the morning ? Certainly the light that fol- 
lowed the brooding spirit and the commanding word. How 
long was the day ? How long the night, or the darkness ? The 
account tells us nothing about it. There is something on its 
face which seems to repel any such question. The whole spirit 
and style of the account are at war with narrowness and arbi- 
trariness of any such computation. Where are we to get twelve 
hours for this first night ? Where is the point of commence- 
ment, when darkness began to be on the face of the waters I 
All is vast, sublime, immeasurable. The time is as formless as 
the material. It has, indeed, a chronology, but on another 
scale than that which was afterwards appointed to regulate the 
history of a completed world with its sky-gazing human inhabi- 
tant. One who thinks seriously on the difficulty of accommo- 
dating this first great day to twenty-four hours, as we now 
measure them, needs no other argument. And yet the decision 
here settles the whole question. This first day is the model, in 
this respect, for all the rest. ****** 
The Firmament, — The clear apprehension of the first day 
opens up all the rest. The same exegesis would bear repeti- 
tion in every one. “And God said : ‘Let there be a firmament 
in the midst of the waters, and let it be a dividing 
between the waters and the waters, ? etc., and it was so ; and 
God called the firmament heaven ; and there was an evening 
and a morning, day second.” We look back to find them. 
Where was the morning here ? It was this second dividing , 
and the appearing of this new glory as its result. It is the 
sky, the atmosphere, with its auroral light. It is the causality 
represented in this purely phenomenal language by which 
Moses describes it, according to the conceptions he had of it, 
and which no more guarantees any vulgar notion, than it does 
any science or philosophy, perfect or imperfect, that might be 
brought to explain it. The more clear determines that which 
is less so. The new appearing of the firmament being the 
morning, that from which it had been divided, or that preced- 
ing state in which the earth had beffii left after the separation 
of the light, and in which the fluid masses of air and water yet 
remained in their chaotic formations, is the night. And so, as 


72 


CREATION. 


the formula seems to imply, each time it is repeated ; in this 
way there was also an evening and there was a morning, sec- 
ond day — in this way, or the only way that exegesis will allow, 
for there was no visible sunrising or sunsetting, no astronom- 
ical measurements to make a morning and an evening of any 
other kind. The appearing of the dry land as it rose out of 
the waters, and the quick growth of blooming vegetation that 
covered it, was the third morning. And then that scene of 
glory, the first appearing of the sun, moon and stars in the 
firmament, now prepared for their revelation — this was the 
fourth great morning to which the name is given, and not to 
any particular rising of the sun in the east as the beginning of 
a common day. As there had been a commencement of light , 
or life , so now there is a commencement of astronomical time 
with its subordinate periods of sun-divided days, not to be 
confounded, as Augustine says, with the great God-divided 
days of which the fourth was one as well as the rest. Life 
moving in the waters, and soaring in the air, this was the fifth 
appearing ; and so, according to the ever-preserved analogy, 
the fifth great morning of the world. 

Again a solemn pause, with nature left to its repose, how 
long or short is not revealed, and the sixth morning breaks. 
It is the latter portion of the sixth day. 

Creation of Man. — Now man appears, whether in its earlier or 
later stage. He is surrounded by the animal world, over 
which he is to exercise his more immediate dominion. The 
seventh is the morning of divine rest. The evening that 
precedes is not named in the first chapter, but perhaps we 
may find it in the supplementary account of the second, where 
there are mentioned two remarkable evolutions that seem to 
have no other period to which they can be assigned. They 
are the naming of things, or the divine aiding the human in the 
development of language, and that mysterious sleep of 
humanity (was it long or short?) in which by a process most 
concisely symbolized, but utterly ineffable in respect to the 
manner, the female human is brought out as the closing 
work, and man awakes complete in the likeness of God. “In 
the image of God created he him; male and female created he 
them ” 

A Gradual Outcoming. — It may be said that such a renresenta- 


CREATION. 


73 


tion seems to make the days run into each other. This may be 
admitted without regarding it as any valid objection. The 
darkness still left is the remains, gradually diminishing, of the 
primeval chaos. Each night is a daughter of the ancient Nox, 
vvhilst each new morning is a rising into a higher light. In 
•other words, the evening to each day, though still a disorder 
and a darkness, is a dimunition of the darkness that went 
before, whilst the positive light of each new morning continues 
on, adding its glory to the mornings that follow and “shining 
more and more unto the perfect day,” or perfection of the day, 
the finished and finishing day — the all-including day mentioned 
(Gen ii : 4) as the day when God made the heavens and the 
earth. And so, as Lange observes, and it is a most important 
remark, both for the scientific and Scriptural view, each is “a 
glory that excelleth” but still a building on, and a carrying on, 
the energies that preceded. Each is a new swell of the mighty 
organ, combining all the former tones, and raising them to a 
higher and still higher chorus, until 

“The diapason closes full on man.” 

— Prof. Tayler Lewis: Lange's Commentary on Genesis, pp. 129-34. 

Bible Not Non-committal. — We may say that in its ordinary 
references the Bible may be non-committal as to theories and 
truthful as to facts. It may speak of phenomena without ref- 
erence to causes. But we cannot say this of such a position 
as that taken in the first chapter of Genesis. Here we find 
an attempt to give a statement of the origin of the world. 
This trenches on the domain of method. It must be a revela- 
tion or a myth. * * * When the Bible 

gives us history it subjects itself to monumental evidence. 
But you will say, “ What monumental evidence have we for the 
first chapter of Genesis?” Here we have it on this table. 
We have here a succession of beds of rocks which have been 
formed at different periods since it was first created, and a 
succession of plants, one after another, and a succession of 
animals, from their beginning up to the modern times. This is 
a series of facts derived from monumental evidence, not from 
stones inscribed by man, but from evidence which God himself 
has inscribed. Here we see is the history which God himself 
has given, and if we take the history of the first chapter of 
Genesis, we can apply this and see whether it is true or not. 


74 


CREATION. 


Supposing we fully understand both, we shall be in a position 
to put the two together. In so far as this the Scripture has 
submitted itself to monumental evidence. The writer, long 
before science was so far advanced, has committed himself to 
a history of the earth. Up to a hundred years ago no one 
knew, with any certainty, that there were records preserved in 
the earth that could tell, with God’s own handwriting, whether 
his servant, his supposed servant, had been telling the truth or 
a lie. 

Biblical Creation Not Hurt by Science.— Now, it will not do for 
us to take our stand upon the theory that the Bible was not to 
be committed to science. Here it is different ; and the great 
error is often made by theorists and writers on this subject 
when they confound these two distinct things, and talk of the 
first chapter of Genesis, as not to be compared with science. 
But common sense teaches us that this is not the way to treat 
this question. It will suit for the incidental points which may 
be true as records of facts which present themselves to the 
eye, but not with regard to those which man could not see. 

This is a hard test for the Bible. Many of its friends are 
frightened at that test. I do not think they should be. I think 
they will find that Scripture will stand even that hard test, and 
that it will come, after a time, to be regarded as one of the 
proofs of the inspiration of Scripture. — Dr. J. W. Dawson : 
Tribune Extra, No. 26 . 

Source of All nistory is Eye-Witness. — The source of all human 
history is eye-witness, be it that of the reporter, or of another 
whose account has been handed down. Only what man has 
himself seen or experienced can be the subject of man’s histori- 
cal compositions. So that history, as far as man can write it, 
can begin with but the point at which he has entered into con- 
scious existence, and end with the moment that constit utes the 
present time. Beyond these points, however, lies a great pro- 
vince of historic development, existing on the one side as the 
Past , on the other side as the Future. For when man begins to 
be an observer or actor of history, he himself, and the whole 
circumstantials of his condition, have already come historically 
into being. Nor does the flow of development stop with what 
is his present. Millions of influences are spinning the thread 
still on; but no one can tell what the compound result of all 
their energies is to be. Both' these sorts of history, then, lie 


CREATION. 75 

beyond the region of man’s knowledge, which is shut up in 
space and time, and can only call the present its own. It is God 
alone who, standing beyond and above space and time, sees 
backwards and forwards both the development which preceded 
the first present of men, and that which will succeed this our 
latest present. Whatever the difference of the two kinds of 
history may be, they hold the same position in relation both to 
the principle of the human ignorance and the principle of the 
human knowledge. The principle of the ignorance is man’s 
condition as a creature; the principle of the knowledge is the 
Divine knowledge; and the medium between ignorance and 
knowledge is objectively Divine Eevelation, and subjectively 
prophetic vision by man, in which he beholds with the eye of 
the mind what is shut and hid from the eye of his body. — Dr. 
Kurtz : Bible and Astronomy . 

Proper Statement of Theory of Creation.— What, then, is the 
actual statement of the theory of creation, as it may be held by 
a modern man of science? Simply this: that all things have 
been produced by the Supreme Creative Will, acting either 
directly or through the agency of the forces and materials of 
His own production. 

This theory does not necessarily affirm that creation is 
miraculous, in the sense of being contrary to or subversive of 
law; law and order are as applicable to creation as to any 
other process. It does not contradict the idea of successive 
creations. There is no necessity that the process should be 
instantaneous and without progression. It does not imply that 
all kinds of creation are alike. There may be higher and lower 
kinds. It does not even exclude evolution or derivation to a cer- 
tain extent ; anything once created, may, if sufficiently flexible 
and elastic, be evolved or involved in various ways. Indeed, 
creation and derivation may, rightly understood, be comple- 
mentary to each other. Created things, unless absolutely un- 
changeable, must be more or less modified by influences from 
within and from without, and derivation or evolution may 
account for certain subordinate changes of things already 
made. Man, for example, may be a product of creation, yet his 
creation may have been in perfect harmony with those laws of 
procedure which the Creator has set for His own opera- 
tions. He may have been preceded by other creations of things 
more or less similar or dissimilar. He may have been created 


76 


CREATION. 


by the same processes with some or all of these, or by different 
means. His body may have been created in one way, his soul 
in another. He may, nay, in all probability would be, part of a 
plan of which some parts would approach very near to him in 
structure or functions. After his creation, spontaneous culture 
and outward circumstances may have molded him into varieties, 
and given him many different kinds of speech and of habits. 
These points are so obvious to common sense that it would be 
quite unnecessary to insist on them were they not habitually 
overlooked or misstated by evolutionists. 

Creation Theory Free From Absurdities of Evolution Theory.— 

The creation hypothesis is also free from some of the difficul- 
ties of evolution. It avoids the absurdity of an eternal pro- 
gression from the less to the more complex. It provides in 
will , the only source of power actually known to us by ordin- 
ary experience, an intelligible origin of nature. It does not 
require us to contradict experience by supposing that there 
are no differences of kind or essence in things. It does not 
require us to assume, contrary to experience, an invariable 
tendency to differentiate and improve. It does not exact the 
bridging over of all gaps which may be found between the sev- 
eral grades of beings which exist or have existed. — Dr, J, W. 
Dawson : Story of Earth and Man , page 340-2. 

Animal Structures are Creative Ideas.— And now let me ask : Is 
it my ingenuity that has imposed upon these structures the 
conclusions I have drawn from them 1 ? Have I so combined 
them in my thought that they have become to me a plastic 
form, out of which I draw a Crinoid, an Ophiuran, a Star-Fish, 
a Sea-Urchin, or a Holothurian at will ? or is this structural 
idea inherent in them all, so that every observer who has a true 
insight into their organization, must find it written there ? Had 
our scientific results anything to do with our inventive faculties, 
every naturalist’s conclusions would be colored by his individ- 
ual opinions; but when we find all zoologists convergingmore 
and more towards each other, arriving, as their knowledge 
increases, at exactly the same views, then we must believe 
that these structures are the Creative Ideas in living reality. 
In other words, so far as there is truth in them , our systems are 
what they are, not because Aristotle, Linnaeus, Cuvier, or all 
the men who ever studied Nature, have so thought and so 


CREATION. 


77 


expressed their thought, but because God so thought and so 
expressed His thought in material forms, when He laid the plan 
of Creation, and when man himself existed only in the intel- 
lectual conception of his Maker.— Agassiz: Methods of Study 
in Natural History, page 231. 

Divine Volition and Human Manifest Alike.— The sphere of crea- 
tion presents an array of mechanical effects not distinguished 
qualitatively from those which flow from human volition ; and 
we cannot, without violence to our intuitions, refer them to a 
different category of causation. We are driven by the neces- 
sary laws of thought to pronounce those energies styled gravi- 
tation, heat, chemical affinity, and their correlates, nothing less 
than the energies of intelligent will. But as it is not human 
will which energizes in the whirlwind and the comet, it must be 
the Divine will. — Winchell : Evolution , p. 109. 

Thompson Quotes Max Muller on Violence Done Moses.— By dis- 
regarding that principle of interpretation which seeks the mean- 
ing of an author in the familiar conceptions of his own age, and 
forcing upon his words ideas derived from later discoveries and 
other modes of thought, great violence has been done to the 
text and teaching of Moses. u The great majority of readers/* 
says Max Muller, u transfer, without hesitation, the ideas which 
they connect with words as used in the nineteenth century to 
the mind of Moses or his contemporaries, forgetting altogether 
the distance which divides their language and their thought 
from the thoughts and languages of the wandering tribes of 
Israel.” (Chips from a German Workshop, i: p. 133.) — Dr.J, 
P. Thompson : Genesis and Geology : p. 18. 

now Unaided Man Would Have Placed the Orders of Creation.— 

The first thought that strikes the scientific reader is the evi- 
dence of Divinity, not merely in the first verse of the record, 
and the successive fiats, but in the whole order of creation. 
There is so much that the most recent readings of science have 
for the first time explained, that the idea of man as the author 
becomes utterly incomprehensible. By proving the record 
true, science pronounces it divine, for who could correctly nar- 
rate the secrets of eternity but God himself? Moreover, the 
order or arrangement is not a possible intellectual conception, 
although we grant to man the intuition of a God. Man would 
very naturally have placed the creation of vegetation, one of 


78 


CREATION. 


the two kingdoms of life, after that of the sun, and next to that 
the other kingdom of life, especially as the sunlight is so 
essential to growth ; and the creation of quadrupeds he would 
as naturally have referred to the fifth day, leaving a whole day 
to man, the most glorious of all creations. ***** The 
creation consists, according to the record, of two great periods ; 
the first three days constitute the inorganic history, the last three 
days the organic history of the earth. Each period begins 
with light ; the first light cosmical, the second light to direct 
days and seasons on the earth. Each period ends in a day of 
two great works. On the third day Ood divided the land from 
the waters , and He saw it was good. Then followed a work 
totally different, the creation of vegetation , the institution of a 
kingdom of life. So, on the sixth day , God created quadrupeds , 
and pronounced His work good ; and as a second and far great- 
er work of the day, totally new in its grandest element, He 
created man. — Prof. A. Guyot : as cited with comments by Prof . 
Dana in the Bibliotheca Sacra for January , 1856. 

No Parturient Powers Within the Earth. — Suppose the world to 
be in its condition of inorganic progress, we have no scientific 
ground for supposing that it could pass to a higher state, pos- 
sessing living beings, by any parturient powers within. Or if 
life exists, we still get no hint as to the evolution of the four 
sub-kingdoms of animal life from a universal germ ; nor as to 
the origin of the Class-types, Order-family, or Genus-types, or 
those of species, each of which is a distinct idea in the plan of 
creation. Hature, in fact, pronounces such a theory of evolu- 
tion absolutely false. The perpetual presence of mind, infinite 
in power, wisdom, and love, and ever acting, is manifest in the 
whole history of the past. — Prof. Dana : Bibliotheca Sacra , 
January, 1856. 

Species Not Evolved from Species. — Species have not been made 
out of species by any process of growth or development, 
for the transition forms do not occur; the evolution or 
plan of progress was by successive creations of species in 
their full perfection. After every evolution, no imperfect or 
half-made forms occur ; no back step in creation : but a step 
forward, through new forms, more elevated in general than 
those of earlier times ; the creation was not in a lineal series 
from the very lowest upward. The types are wholly indepen- 


CREATION. 


79. 


dent, and are not connected lineally, either historically or zoo- 
logically. The earliest species of a class were often far from 
the very lowest, although among the inferior. In many cases 
the original or earliest group was but little inferior to those of 
later date, and the progress was toward a purer expression of 
the type. But Geology declares, unequivocally, that the new 
forms were new expressions, under the type-idea, by created 
material forms, and not by forms educed or developed from 
one another. — Prof. Dana: Bibliotheca Sacra , January and 
July , 1856. 

[Although the above quotations are twenty-four years old, Prof. 
Dana has made no corrections. — Ed.] 

The Revealed Pieces on to the Geological,— It is truly wonderful 
how thoroughly, in its general scope, the revealed pieces on to 
the geologic record. We know, as geologists, that the dynasty 
of the fish was succeeded by that of the reptile — that the dy- 
nasty of the reptile was succeeded by that of the mammiferous 
quadruped — and that the dynasty of the mammiferous quadru- 
ped was succeeded by that of man as man now exists — a creature 
of mixed character, and subject, in all conditions, to wide alter- 
nations of enjoyment and suffering. We know further — so far 
at least as we have yet succeeded in deciphering the record — 
that the several dynasties were introduced, not in their lower, 
but in their higher forms — that, in short, in the imposing pro- 
gramme of creation it was arranged, as a general rule, that in 
each of the great divisions of the processions, the magnates 
should walk first. We recognize yet further the fact of degra- 
dation specially exemplified in the fish and the reptile. And 
then, passing on to the revealed record, we learn that the dy- 
nasty of man, in the mixed state and character, is not the final 
one, but that there is to be yet another creation, or, more prop- 
erly, re-creation, known theologically as the Resurrection, 
which shall be connected in its physical components, by bonds 
of mysterious paternity, with the dynasty which now reigns, 
and be bound to it mentally by the chain of identity, conscious 
and actual ; but which, in all that constitutes superiority, shall 
be as vastly its superior as the dynasty of responsible man is 
superior to even the lowest of the preliminary dynasties. We 
are further taught, that at the commencement of this last of 
the dynasties, there will be re-creation of not only elevated, 
but also of degraded beings— a re-creation of the lost. We 


80 


CREATION. 


are taught yet further, that though the present dynasty be that 
of a lapsed race, which at their first introduction were placed 
on higher ground than that on which they now stand, and 
sank by their own act, it was yet part of the original design, 
from the beginning of all things, that they should occupy the 
existing platform ; and that 

Redemption is no After-Thought. — Redemption is thus no after- 
thought, rendered necessary by the fall, but, on the contrary, 
part of a general scheme, for which provision had been made 
from the beginning : so that the Divine Man, through whom the 
work of restoration has been effected, was in reality, in refer- 
ence to the purposes of the Eternal, what he is designated in 
the remarkable text “ the Lamb slain from the foundations of 
the world.” Slain from the foundations of the world! Could 
the assertors of the stony science ask for language more 
express ? By piecing the two records together — that revealed 
in Scripture and that revealed in the rocks — records which, 
however widely geologists may mistake the one, or commen- 
tators misunderstand the other, have emanated from the 
same great Author — we learn that in slow and solemn majesty 
has period succeeded period, each in succession ushering in a 
higher and yet higher scene of existence — that fish, reptiles, 
mammiferous quadrupeds, have reigned in turn — that responsi- 
ble man, “ made in the image of God,” and with dominion over 
all creatures, ultimately entered into a world ripened for his 
reception; but, further, that this passing scene, in which he 
forms the prominent figure, is not the final one in the long 
series, but merely the last of the preliminary scenes ; and that 
that period to which the by-gone ages, incalculable in amount, 
with all their well-proportioned gradations of being, form the 
imposing vestibule, shall have perfection for its occupant, and 
eternity for its duration . — Hugh Miller: Footprints of the 
Creator, p. 325. 

Sublimity of Mosaic Account of Creation. —The account of the 
creation of the world, as given in the first chapter of the Bible, 
has always been greatly admired for its beauty and sublimity. 
The sentence with which it commences, “ In the beginning, God 
created the heavens and the earth,” is a grand rhetorical syn- 
thesis which brings the whole subject under a single view of 
the mind, and the subsequent analysis unrolls the vast picture 


CREATION. 


81 


in a succession of animated scenes. But this is only one of its 
least remarkable traits. Hence, we find that even a heathen 
rhetorician and philosopher, the amiable and accomplished Lon- 
ginus, could not withhold from it his meed of praise ; for in his 
celebrated work on The Sublime he thus speaks of it in com- 
parison with the beauties of Homer: “ So, also, the Jewish 
lawgiver [he was not bewildered on the authorship like some . — 
Ed.], who was no common man, exhibits the power of the Deity 
in a manner worthy of .its excellency, as follows : God said — 
what does He say? ‘Let there be light, and it was; let the 
earth be, and it was. 7 ” — Dr. McTlvaine : Princeton Review , May , 
1878. 

Eternal Sterility Without God. — An eternal sterility must have 
possessed the world where all things had been fixed and fastened 
everlastingly with the adamantine chains of specific gravity, if 
the Almighty had not spoken, and said, u Let the earth bring 
forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding 
fruit after its kind';” “ and it was so.” — Bentley . 

Cause of Man’s Creation and His Capacities. — It is a universal 
axiom of science that u from nothing, nothing comes.” As this 
incorporeal organism has been demonstrated to be an entity — 
a real counterpart of the physical structure, since it is only 
through it that an inheritance can take place and transmissions 
can occur — it must, therefore, be a part of some actual sub- 
stance which had a previous existence ; and as the existence of 
a God has been scientifically demonstrated, who was capable 
of producing living organisms out of inorganic matter, such a 
God therefore must be a substantial and intelligent entity. 
Just as certain as that our material organism necessarily had 
to come from a source or fountain of pre-existing matter, just 
so sure must this mental and vital organism pervading every 
living creature have come from a source or fountain of pre- 
existing mind and life. 

Thus, the way is logically made clear, for the assumption 
that the vital and mental organism of each living creature con- 
sists of a mere drop from out the fountain of God’s own in- 
finite vital and mental substance. To the primal and miracu- 
lously created parents of each species, the Creative Will must 
then have transferred an infinitesimal drop of His own being, 
constituting not only the real entities of these primal parents, 

F 


82 


CREATION. 


but the perpetual specific germ for transmitting the same 
entity to offspring, and the only part of an organic being not 
liable to displacement and substitution, as so clearly shown in 
the preceding chapter, while the primordial stock of knowl- 
edge given to the parents of each species, necessary to their 
primitive conditions of life, was also but a drop out of His own 
infinite intelligence. 

And here, accidentally, we again come back to the starting 
point — the real, intrinsic, and essential difference between the 
vital and mental organisms of the human and lower forms of 
being. From the hints already given, the thoughtful reader 
must have caught a glimpse of an infinite chasm yawning be- 
tween the man and even his faithful dog ; though its expansion, 
embracing an eternity of existence and development, may not 
have been fully comprehended by him thus far. He has only 
to note the essential constituent element of difference in the 
vital and mental entities on each side of this hiatus, and it will 
flash upon him at once as the grandest of biological concep- 
tions. Here it is, in a condensed form. While the lower ani- 
mals receive at birth their specific stores of knowledge suited 
to their environment (without the capacity of teaching or being 
taught, except to a very limited specific extent), thus adapting 
them exclusively to the single state of existence, the human 
being receives no knowledge at birth — not a single idea of inher- 
ited intelligence — but, as before observed, an unlimited blank 
capacity for being taught, having an interior organism capable 
of being cultivated and expanded to eternity ! This alone con- 
stitutes a wall as broad as the earth and as high as the heavens 
between the man and the brute. 

But, as a necessary psychological corollary and scientific 
outgrowth of this sublime demarkation, lower animals cannot 
have the slightest conception of a future life, since their vital 
and mental organisms, as well as their specific stores of inher- 
ited knowledge, are only suited to and limited within a tempo- 
rary existence. Hence, a future life of conscious activity, be- 
ing unanticipated, undesired, and wholly unconceived of, by 
lower species, would be of not the least advantage even to the 
most cultivated orang-outang, and would be unappreciated by 
such creatures even if they had it, since it would be but an 
eternal sameness without the eternal advances in culture 
necessary to make it otherwise, of which their very organic 
natures are wholly insusceptible. 


CREATION. 


83 


The greatest and most important difference between man and 
the lower animal, even including the higher apes— that differ- 
ence which maybe properly called the distinguishing charac- 
teristic-consists in the fact that no animal below man has or 
can have a conception of life after death, from the very nature 
of their instinctive knowledge and the manner of its reception. 
Whatever other differences may exist, and they are numberless 
and startling, this is incomparably the most intrinsic and 
universal. 

All this limitation to earthly objects, however, is exactly the 
reverse with man. With his unlimited blank capacity at birth 
for receiving instruction, he immediately acquires with his 
ordinary and rudimental intelligence, even if not specially 
taught it, a conception of living on forever ; and not only such 
a conception of a future existence, but a desire for and appreci- 
ation of such an endless opportunity of acquiring knowledge. 
There is no reasonable or scientific ground for supposing that 
a longing anticipation of and a universal aspiration for a life 
beyond death could have been thus made an indestructible 
part of man’s mental organism were there no such a possibility 
as a future life in the divine economy of the universe. This 
blank capacity for unlimited cultivation and eternal advance- 
ment in knowledge becomes the guarantee of man’s immor- 
tality — while the lower animal, having no such a capacity as a 
title-deed to a future life, gives back at death the mental and 
vital drop of its essential entity, which, instead of being anni- 
hilated or in any sense lost or blotted out, exists forever — not 
as an identity of being, but falls back and is re-absorbed into 
the great and infinite fountain of life and intelligence from 
which it originally came as a spark of being — the same as a 
drop of water which rises from the sea in the form of vapory 
mist, and after being carried by clouds to distant lands and 
caused to descend in rain to water the soil, serving thereby 
its temporary use, percolates to the river, through whose 
channel it at last finds its way back to the original fountain 
whence it came, where, by illiquation, it forever loses its 
identity in the bosom of the mother ocean, without an atom of 
its substance being annihilated. 

Even the infant, at birth, or before it has a conscious thought, 
is thus the heir by title-deed to immortal life, though its 
actual knowledge is not the millionth part that of the pig or 


84 


REATION. 


puppy of the same age. It starts, thus, a blank as to intel- 
ligence ; but, having the infinite endorsement of its father and 1 
mother, which involves the undeveloped capability of analyzing 
the stars and weighing the planets, it holds wrapped up in its 
vital and mental organism the ego of an indestructible personal 
identity; and should it thus die untaught, and even unconcious 
of its own being, its magna cliarta of selfhood will be its pass- 
port to the primary college of the angels, and thence to the 
university over whose entrance is written in letters of life — 
The Garden of Eternal Progress. — A. Wilford Hall : Problem 
of Human Life , pp. 469-471. 

Whatever the Process it is Still Creation.— But whatever may 
have been the method or process of Creation, it is Creation 
still. If it were proved to-morrow that the first man was “born ,r 
from some pre-existing Form of Life, it would still be true that 
such a birth must have been, in every sense of the word, a new 
Creation. It would still be as true that God formed him “out 
of the dust of the earth ” as it is true that He has so formed 
every child who is now called to answer the first question of 
all theologies. And we must remember that the language of 
Scripture nowhere draws, or seems even conscious of, the 
distinction which modern philosophy draws so sharply between 
the Natural and the Supernatural. All the operations of 
Nature are spoken of as operations of the Divine mind. Cre- 
ation is the embodiment of a Divine idea. — Argyll : Reign of 
Law, p. 29. 

First a Model, then a Making. — If the world were made by any 
antecedent Mind or Understanding, that is, by a Deity, then 
there must needs be an Idea and Exemplar of the whole world 
before it was made, and consequently actual knowledge, both 
in the order of Time and Nature, before Things. But, conceiv- 
ing of Knowledge as it was got by their own finite minds, and 
ignorant of any evidence of an ideal Archetype for the world or 
any part of it, they (the Democritic Philosophers, who denied a 
Divine Creative Mind) affirmed that there was none, and con- 
cluded that there could be no knowledge or mind before the 
world was, as its cause. 

Now, however, the recognition of an ideal exemplar for 
the vertebrated animals proves that the knowledge of such a 
being as Man must have existed before man appeared — for the 


CREATION. 


85 


Divine Mind which planned the Archetypal, also foreknew all 
its modifications. — Prof . Owen : On the Nature of Limbs. 

What Man Sees to be True God Sees to be True.— In the first place, 
the Earth, as the abode of man, the intellectual creature, con- 
tains a being, whose mind is, in some measure, of the same na- 
ture as the Divine Mind of the Creator. The laws which man dis- 
covers in the Creation must be laws known to God. The truths 
— for instance,, the truths of geometry — which man sees to be 
true, God also must see to be true. That there were, from the 
beginning, in the Creative Mind, Creative Thoughts, is a doc- 
trine involved in every intelligent view of Creation. — Dr. Whe- 
well: Plurality of Worlds , p.275. 

To Disprove Creation is to Disprove Christianity. — As a fact, the 
Christian revelation asserts “Creation and Mr. Darwin and 
Professor Huxley were right in thinking that to disprove 
““Creation n was to disprove Christianity.” Our supposed in- 
quirer is manifestly bound to carry on such inquiry not only 
with a candid spirit, but with a desire to find such asserted 
revelation to be true. He is so bound, since no one who 
has arrived at a philosophic contemplation of the Infinite 
Majesty and absolute holiness and beauty of the God whose 
•existence is made known to us in Nature, can rationally do 
other than most earnestly desire a revealed knowlege of Him, 
if haply such may be found. — Mivart : Lessons from Nature , 
p. 427. 

What the Word Creation now Means Both in Natural and Spiritual 
Things. — Among words, the word Creation is the best indicator 
of the movement of modern thought. Many of us remember 
when it was common to say that the infinite Creator, by His 
fiat alone, made all things out of nothing. The human intellect, 
now trained by the exacting methods of scientific investigation, 
knows that something out of nothing is unthinkable. The 
origin of existences as known to us is as unapproachable to 
thought as the invisible principle of life in nature is to the 
microscope. Creation now is the movement of infinite power, 
wisdom and goodness, working by normal processes. Finite 
thought must be content to seize that movement as it comes 
into the field of its telescope, and leave its beginning to the 
«ye of the Infinite. The time is not long past when all men 
thought all things were made at once, or in six days of twenty- 


86 


CREATION. 


four hours ; the word conveys that conception now to very few 
educated minds. Infinite power working through immeasurable 
time by processes still going on before our eyes is what it 
means to us. But this is to look at the term and the changes 
of its meaning simply as applied to this outward world. In the 
New Testament it is applied to the “ man within.” Here, a 
spiritual world, composed of Christian men, whose moral and 
spiritual characters are contemplated in the description, is 
styled “ His workmanship created in Christ Jesus.” It is also 
interesting to note how re-definition has been forced upon 
the word, to adjust it to the advancing knowledge of truth. 
When men thought that the orders of existences in the material 
universe were produced in rapid succession, each by an 
instant sovereign fiat, they were compelled by the inexorable 
laws of reason to believe that the production of spiritual life in 
the souls of men was an instant, sovereign, and miraculous act 
of omnipotence. But as the word creation enlarged its defini- 
tion, by the knowledge of Divine Power working by the laws 
of nature, so the intelligence of our time, illuminated by this 
new definition, has seen the Divine potencies of truth and love 
working by the normal processes of thought, emotion, and 
volition, creating men anew. Creative power, in the fullest 
and most orderly conception that we can form of it, working 
both by the light of science and revelation, began with matter, 
and wrought on to living organisms, and through these to man. 
“That was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural.” 
Still, in the new creation, it begins with the spiritual elements 
of our nature and proceeds outwards, creating anew thought, 
feeling, volition ; these again develop in the outward activities 
of Christian civilization, modifying the earth and its elements 
and indicating clearly the fulfillment of the Divine promise that 
there shall not only be a new man and a new life, but a new 
heaven and a new earth, when the circle of creation shall have 
been completed. — A. Procter. 

What Physical Laws Do. — If I take brass, glass and other 
materials, and fuse them, the product is a slag. This is what 
physical laws do. If I take those same materials, and form 
them into a telescope, that is what mind does . — Joseph Henry . 

A Puerile Act. — It is easy to see how puerile are those who 
give nature a species of individual existence distinct from the 


CREATION. 


87 


Creator, and from the law which he has impressed upon the 
movements and peculiarities of the forms given by Him to 
living things, and which He makes to act upon their bodies 
with a peculiar force and reason. — Cuvier. 

Creation an Evolving Rather Than an Event.— Creation is com- 
ing to be viewed as an evolving rather than an event : as a 
process demanding the roll of indefinite years : as being, what 
the Bible calls it, a genesis , that is, a birth, with the necessarily 
accompanying ideas of long time, and deferred perfection. 
The conception of sudden bursts of creative power from 
without, is changing for the conception of an orderly and con- 
stant development from within. Yet this stupendous chrono- 
metry of geology and astronomy reveals no trace of a lonely 
God. Though we go back until the sky comes down to the 
hills, and imagination will go no further, we find nature’s forces 
toiling as busily as now. — Prof. Bowne: Philosophy of Spen- 
cer, page 220. 

Augustine’s Questions. — “ I asked the earth, and it answered, ‘ 1 
am not He ; ’ and whatsoever are therein made the same con- 
fession. I asked the sea, and the deep, and the creeping 
things that lived, and they replied: ‘We are not thy God; 
seek higher than we.’ I asked the breezy air, and Jhe universal 
air, with its inhabitants, answered : 4 Anixamenes was deceived. 
I am not God.’ I asked the heavens, the sun, moon and stars : 
‘Neither,’ say they, ‘are we the God whom thou seekest.’ 
And I answered unto these things which stood about the door 
of my flesh: ‘Ye have told me something concerning my 
God, that ye are not He ; tell me something about Him.’ And 
with a loud voice they exclaimed : ‘ He made us ! ’ ” — Augus- 
tine : Confessions, Booh x, Chap. 8. 

Human Minds Will Rise to the Truth of Moses.— If the Mosaic 
account of creation be the dictation of the ever-living God, 
then, in His own time, He will permit the human mind to rise high- 
er and still higher in its researches in the universe, until, God aid- 
ing, it shall reach, by its own struggles, to the knowledge of the 
plan by which this world we inhabit, these planets that roll and 
shine, and yonder sun, luminiferous and resplendent with all 
the host of Heaven, were brought to people the unlimited re- 
gions of vacuity. — 0. M. Mitchell : The Astronomy of the Bible, 
page 211. 


88 


CREATION. 


Moses and Geology Compared.— Thus a comparison of the actual 
statements of Moses with the discoveries and conclusions of 
modern science is so far from shaking, that it confirms our faith 
in the accuracy of the sacred narrative. We are astonished to 
see how the Hebrew Prophet, in his brief and rapid outline, 
sketched 3,000 years ago, has anticipated some of the most 
wonderful of recent discoveries, and can ascribe the accuracy 
of his statements and language to nothing but inspiration. 
Moses relates how God created the heavens and the earth at 
an indefinitely remote period before the earth was the habita- 
tion of man — geology has lately discovered the existence of a 
long prehuman period. A comparison with other scriptures 
shows that the “ heavens” of Moses include the abode of 
angels, and the place of the fixed stars, which existed before 
the earth. Astronomy points out remote worlds, whose light 
began its journey long before the existence of man. Moses 
declares that the earth was or became covered with water, and 
was desolate and empty. Geology has found by investigation 
that the primitive globe was covered with an uniform ocean, 
and that there was a long azoic period, during which neither 
plant nor animal could live. Moses states that there was a 
time when the earth was not dependent upon the sun for light 
or heat, wh^i, therefore, there could be no climatic differences. 
Geology has lately verified this statement by finding tropical 
plants and animals scattered over all parts of the earth. 
Moses affirms that the sun, as well as the moon, is only a light- 
holder. Astronomy declares that the sun itself is a non- 
luminous body, dependent for its light on a luminous atmos- 
phere. Moses asserts that the earth existed before the sun 
was given as a luminary. Modern science proposes a theory 
which explains how this was possible. Moses asserts that 
there is an expanse extending from earth to distant heights, in 
which the heavenly bodies are placed. Recent discoveries 
lead to the supposition of some subtile fluid medium in which 
they move. Moses describes the process of creation as gradual, 
and mentions the order in which living things appeared, plants, 
fishes, fowls, land-animals, man. By the study of nature 
geology has arrived independently at the same conclusion. 
Where did Moses get all this knowledge? How was it that 
he worded his rapid sketch with such scientific accuracy ? If 
he in his day possessed the knowledge which genius and 


CREATION. 


89 


science have attained only recently, that knowledge is super- 
human. If he did not possess the knowledge, then his pen must 
have been guided by superhuman wisdom. Faith has, there- 
fore, nothing to fear from science. So far the records of 
nature, fairly studied and rightly interpreted, have proved the 
most valuable and satisfying of all commentaries upon the 
statements of Scripture. The ages required for geological 
development, the infinity of worlds and the immensity of 
space revealed by astronomy, illustrate, as no other note or 
comment has ever done, the Scripture doctrines of the eternity, 
the omnipotence, the wisdom of the Creator. Let, then, Science 
pursue her boundless course, and multiply her discoveries in 
the heavens and in the earth. The believer is persuaded that 
they will only show more clearly that “ the words of the Lord 
are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of fire, purified 
seven times.” Let Criticism also continue her profoundly 
interesting and important work. Let her explore, sift, analyze, 
scrutinize, with all her powers, the documents, language, and 
contents of Scripture, and honestly tell us the results. Since 
the day when Laurentius Yalla exposed the fiction of the 
Imperial donation, she has contributed much to the removal of 
error, and the advancement of literary, patristic, and historic 
truth; and Divine revelation has also been illustrated by her 
labors. — McCaul: Aids to Faith, pp. 268-9. 

Unity of Plan in a Diversity of Types.— Some have mistaken 
the action and re-action which exist everywhere between or- 
ganized beings, and the physical influences under which they 
live, for a casual or genetic connection, and carried their mis- 
takes so far as to assert that these manifold influences could 
really extend to the production of these beings ; not consider- 
ing how inadequate such a cause would be, and that even the 
action of physical agents upon organized beings presupposes 
the very existence of those beings. The simple fact that there 
has been a period in the history of our earth, now well known 
to geologists, when none of these organized beings as yet ex- 
isted, and when, nevertheless, the material constitution of our 
globe, and the physical forces acting upon it were essentially 
the same as they are now, shows that these influences are in- 
sufficient to call into existence any living being. 

Nothing is more striking throughout the animal and vege- 
table kingdom than the unity of plan in the structure of the 


90 


CREATION. 


most diversified types. From pole to pole, in every longitude, 
mammalia, birds, reptiles, and fishes, exhibit one and the same 
plan of structure, involving abstract conceptions of the high- 
est order, far transcending the broadest generalizations of man 
— for it is only after the most laborious investigations that man 
has arrived at an imperfect understanding of this plan. — 
Agassiz : Essay on Classification, Sections 2 and 4. 

A Mistake Corrected by Age. — When I was young, Cebes, it is sur- 
prising how earnestly I desired that species of science which they 
call physical — for it appeared to me pre-eminently excellent in 
bringing us to know the causes of each, to know through what 
each is produced and destroyed and exists. But happening to 
hear some one read in a book, which he said was of Anaxago- 
ras, that it is Intelligence which is the parent of order, and 
cause of all things, I was pleased with this cause, and it seemed 
to me to be well that Intelligence was the cause of all, and I 
considered that, were it so, the ordering Intelligence ordered 
all things, and placed each thing where it was best. — Socrates: 
The Phaedo. 

Harmony Between Science and Revelation as to Order of Creation. 

There have been scientific theories, no doubt, which were con- 
trary to the Mosaic account of creation ; and certain interpre- 
tations of the book of Genesis have also been contrary to 
established facts of science ; but setting aside merely specula- 
tive theories on the one hand, and erroneous interpretations 
on the other, we find in this narrative, as an outline of creation, 
a general harmony with the geological order. The first two 
days describe chemical action upon inorganic matter ; the third 
day announces the production of vegetable life ; the process of 
evaporation is still going forward, and the excess of moisture 
in the atmosphere would, up to this period, have obscured the 
planetary bodies ; but on the fourth day the astronomical 
heavens are made visible in their relation to our globe ; the 
fifth and sixth days introduce the successive gradations of ani- 
mal life that culminate at last in man. — Dr. J. P. Thompson : 
Genesis and Geology. 

Scripture Interposes No Barrier to Science.— I am forming no 
hypothesis in geology ; I only plead that the ground is clear, 
and that the dictates of the Scripture interpose no bar to ob- 
servation and reasoning upon the mineralogical constitution of 


CREATION. 


91 


the earth, and the remains of organized creatures which its 
strata disclose. If those investigations should lead us to at- 
tribute to the earth and to the other planets and astral spheres 
an antiquity which millions or ten thousand millions of years 
might fail to represent, the divine records forbid not their de- 
duction. — Dr. Dye Smith : Scripture and Geology, p. 502. 

Orders of Creation Enumerated.— This account of the world’s 
creation (Moses’) evidently forms an ascending line, or series of 
generations, whose highest point and utmost limit is reached in 
man. The six days’ work arrange themselves in orderly con- 
trast; and in correspondence to this are the sections as they 
have been distinguished by us : 1. The creation of heaven and 
earth in general, and which may also be regarded as the first 
constituting of the symbolical opposition of the two. 2. The 
three first creative days, or the three great divisions which 
constitute the great elementary oppositions or polarities of the 
world, and which are the conditioning of all creature-life : a. 
The element of light and the dark shadow-casting masses, or 
the concrete darkness, and which we must not confound with 
the evening and the morning; 5. The gaseous form of the 
ether, especially of the atmosphere, and the fluid form of the 
earth-sphere ; c. The opposition between the water and the 
firm land. 3. The three last creative days, wherein the above 
parallel is to be observed. 4. The limit or aim of creation- 
man— the Sabbath of God.— Dr. J. D. Lange : Commentary on 
Genesis, p. 161. 

Subterranean Beings Would Pronounce for Deity.— If there were 
beings who lived in the depths of the earth, in dwellings 
adorned with statues and paintings, and everything which is 
possessed in rich abundance by those whom men deem fortu- 
nate ; and if these beings could receive tidings of the might and 
majesty of the gods, and could then emerge from their hidden 
dwellings through the open fissures of the earth to the places 
which we inhabit; if they could suddenly behold the earth and 
the sea and the vault of heaven : could recognize the ex- 
panse of the cloudy firmament, and the might of the winds of 
heaven, and admire the sun in his majesty, beauty and radiant 
effulgence ; and, lastly, when night veiled the earth in darkness, 
they could behold the starry heavens, the changing moon, and 
the stars rising and setting in the unvarying course ordained 


D2 


CREATION. 


from eternity, they would surely exclaim : “There are gods ! and 
such great things must be the work of their hands .” — Aristotle : 
Quoted by Humboldt in Cosmos . 

Newton Speaks. — It became him who created them to set them 
in order ; and if he did so, it is unphilosophical to seek for any 
other origin of the world, or to pretend that it might arise out 
of a chaos by the mere laws of nature . — Sir Isaac Newton. 

Humanity Typified in Insects and Birds.— Let us carry ourselves 
back in spirit to the mysterious week, to the teeming work- 
days of the Creator, as they rose in vision before the eye of 
the inspired historian of the generations of the heavens and 
the earth, in the days that the Lord God made the earth and 
the heavens. And who that hath watched their ways with an 
understanding heart could contemplate the filial and loyal bee, 
the home-building, wedded, and divorceless sparrow, and, 
above all, the manifoldly intelligent ant-tribes, with their com- 
monwealths and confederacies, their warriors and miners, the 
husband-folk that fold in their tiny flocks on the honeyed leaf, 
and the virgin sisters with the holy instincts of maternal love, 
detached, and in selfless purity, and not say to himself, Behold 
the shadow of approaching humanity, the sun arising from be- 
hind, in the kindling morning of the creation ! — S. T. Coleridge : 
Aids to Reflection , App. 36. 

Bible Take°< up What Science Leaves Untouched. — Besides this 
governing and guiding presence, the Bible reveals another link 
in the chain of material causation. It shows, back of the pow- 
er, the Divine heart of grace. It declares that all things work 
together for good to them that love God. It thus puts a soul 
and an emotion in all the varied interlacing of material phe- 
nomena: God the Almighty Creator and His infinite love. 
Nature is no more a fragment. It is complete. It is no more 
a blind fatality, but a designed adaptation in its every part. It 
is no more a cold corpse, but all alive with the pulsations of the 
heart of God. And is not this revealed truth concerning na- 
ture far more important to us than all else which our experi- 
mental science can elicit ? Does it not furnish rest both for 
mind and heart, where experimental science would utterly fail? 
Does it not satisfy the cravings of our souls, which cravings 
were made to expect this very revelation from our God ? And 
is not our real triumph over nature gained when we can look 


CREATION 


93 


around on all the grandest and most awful features, and say, in 
calmness, “ My father made them all. His hand upholds and 
guides them all.” — Dr. Crosby: Tribune Extra , No. 26. 

Uses of Creation. — But creation has other uses, too. It is not 
merely a book of science with its didactic purpose ; it is also a 
book of song which seems the spontaneous utterance of emo* 
tion. It exists not only for teaching, but also for expression. 
The beauty of cloud and sky ; the beauty which lies hidden in 
the snow and-ice-crystals which sheet the frozen regions of the 
Pole ; the beauty of oral and sponge and shell with which the 
ocean’s floor is spread; the beauty of grass and flower in forest 
depths, and far out upon the prairie, and deep beneath the 
waves of the sea — what is all this for ? For a didactic pur- 
pose? Surely not. It exists for itself, and is its own justifi- 
cation. Take away created minds, and order and beauty and 
harmony must still exist. It is not to be thought of that chaos 
should forever abide in the presence of the Eternal. Be it 
physical or be it moral, chaos must make way for a new 
earth. These ask no leave of man, and need no audience from 
him. They are indeed related to man, but do not exist solely 
for him. They express not so much the thought as the medi- 
tation of the Eternal. — Prof. Bowne : Philosophy of Spencer % 
262. 


DESIGN 


^fDITORIAL Remark. — Were the doctrine of final causes denied 
merely by an atheistic philosophy, we should take little 
pains to unfold the causes which have brought such denial 
about. But this past forty years, the idea has been widening 
in the minds of many, not really atheists, that the argument for 
final causes, if not a fallacy, is at any rate so greatly impaired 
by philosophic and scientific research, as to be in a measure 
worthless. . It behooves us, therefore, to examine somewhat 
into modern thought, to mark its bearings and conclusions, and 
to determine as to its right to question so salient and solid a 
doctrine as teleology, or design in nature. This we propose 
to do at some length, since the, matters involved are as grave 
as come to the consideration of man. Those, then, who are 
searching for bright and beautiful extracts, will pass over what 
immediately follows ; while those who desire to inform them- 
selves upon both sides of this question, will have good conduct 
in the hand of Professor Bowne and others, and will “ read, 
mark, and inwardly digest.” — Ed, 

The Atomic Theory Examined and Refuted.— The logical and 
scientific value of atheism depends upon the atomic theory 
and two assumed facts. Science conceives matter as composed 
of ultimate atoms which are endowed with certain powers of 
attraction and repulsion. How, these ultimate atoms bear no 
trace of origination, and, in default of proof that they have 
been created, we may assume them to be eternal. We have, 
then, in this conception, first, substantial being ; and, second, 
inherent power ; and in looking for the reason of things we 
must not go beyond this until it becomes plainly incompetent 
to explain the facts. Causes must not be multiplied beyond 
necessity ; and until it can be shown that the forces actually 
at work in the world do not suffice for its explanation, we 
must decline to postulate any additional causes. If the various 
manifestations of the world can be explained by referring them 
to the mutual attractions and repulsions of these atoms, then 


DESIGN. 


95 


not only is tliere no need to postulate any more causes, but we 
cannot logically do so. 

Atoms Cannot Work Intelligence.— With this theory as a start- 
ing-point, the atheist next proceeds to show that these 
atoms are capable of doing the work of intelligence. To ac- 
complish this he brings forward the nebular hypothesis to show 
how gravitation and inertia are capable of building up a solar 
system which bears many marks of design; and for the seeming 
adaptation of organic forms he offers the Darwinian theory. 
By means of these two theories, which he assumes to be estab- 
lished beyond question, he claims to have deprived the argu- 
ment from design of a great part of its force, and to have made 
it extremely probable that a deeper knowledge would destroy 
it altogether. 

The Nebular Theory Examined, — We shall see the force of the 
argument more clearly if we examine the nebular theory. When 
it was believed that the members of the solar system were 
formed as they now exist, and placed in their orbits by Divine 
power, natural theologians saw evidence of purpose and wis- 
dom in the relative arrangement of the parts. The existence 
of the sun in the centre of the system ; the small eccentricity of 
the planet’s orbits, whereby any great variation of light and 
heat is avoided ; the exact balance of central and tangential 
forces, by which the planets are kept in their orbits — all these 
things told of an adapting intelligence. On our own planet they 
found marks of mind, in the alternation of the seasons, and of 
day and night. The relative adjustment of land and water, and 
a thousand other things, told the same story of a superintend- 
ing mind. 

It Attempts to Explain All Things by Natural Laws.— But the 
nebular theory claims to explain all the phenomena by simple 
mechanical laws, and without the intervention of intelligence. 
It assumes only that its atoms were once widely diffused in 
space, and from this assumption it mathematically deduces the 
whole solar system. The nebulous matter began to condense 
by virtue of attraction, and the chances were infinite that it 
would contract accurately on its center, which must produce 
revolution. ' This revolution called into play the inertia of 
matter, and thus produced a centrifugal force. By further con- 
densation the rate of revolution was necessarily increased, as 


96 


DESIGN. 


can be mathematically demonstrated, and the centrifugal force 
increased also. Finally, at the orbit of Neptune, over the 
equator of the revolving mass, the centrifugal force became 
equal to the attraction, and, upon further contraction, a ring 
of matter was left behind. Now, unless this ring was absolutely 
homogeneous and equally exposed to external influences, it 
must contract unequally, and the result would be a disruption 
of the ring into fragments, which would at once assume the 
globular form. These smaller planets, unless they were of the 
same size and were symmetrically disposed throughout the 
orbit, must collect into one — the planet Neptune. Formed in 
this way, the planets would necessarily have orbits of small 
eccentricity — the first mark of design. Owing to the greater 
velocity of the outer part of the ring over the inner part, the 
planets would all revolve upon their axes, which would pro- 
duce day and night — the second mark of design. The shock 
at collecting into one mass would almost inevitably shift the 
plane of the orbit, which would produce seasons — the third 
mark of design. The sun, too, would be in the center of the 
system — the fourth mark of design. 

The Claim of the Friends of the Molecules. — Again, in conden- 
sation, heat would be produced. This would call into action 
magnetic, electric and chemical forces; and these, by their 
interactions, would finally bring the earth to its present form 
and condition. It is claimed, for these reasons, that the pres- 
ent condition of the solar system, together with all those 
prominent aspects which once seemed the work of purpose^ 
are an exact though undetermined function of gravitation and 
inertia. How, then, can they be expressive of intelligence t 
What need is there to postulate intelligence to account for 
them ? Gravitation and inertia give an exhaustive explanation 
of the facts ; why seek further? We may shrink from the con- 
clusion, but the reason is satisfied. A physical explanation of 
the facts is found, and honor binds us to accept it. 

Here, then, in a most conspicuous case, matter seems to be 
doing the work of mind ; and the radical scientific position is, 
that, if our faculties were more acute, and our analysis more 
subtle, we could explain the most complex organization in the 
same way; that we could begin with the simplest properties of 
matter, and mount by an unbroken chain of cause and effect 
to the highest forms of life. Already molecular mechanics are 


DESIGN. 


97 


claiming control of chemistry, chemistry is pushing its front- 
iers over into physiology, and physiology is heir prospective 
to the mental and moral sciences. The nebular theory has 
made it plain that the solar system can be built up without in- 
telligence ; and Darwinism has shown that the most complex 
and artificial forms can be developed from forms so rude and 
simple that no trouble need be taken to account for them. 
Upon the strength of these facts it is claimed that teleology (final 
causes) has received its death-blow. Matter, and its inherent 
forces, already explain much, and are daily explaining more. 
Besides, since the origination of matter cannot be proved, 
every fact ranged under a physical law is so much wrested 
from the government of God. The goal is evident. Natural 
laws are able to administer themselves. God is only a pro- 
visional hypothesis to explain outstanding facts, and is sure to 
be displaced by advancing knowledge. 

Real Root of the Quarrel Between Science and Religion.— Here 
is the real root of the inveterate quarrel between science and 
religion ; here is the fundamental cause of the strange fact, be- 
fore noticed, that scientific study has always tended to embar- 
rass belief. It is the thought, that whatever is the product of 
physical necessity, cannot at the same time be expressive of 
purpose ; that the realms of nature, and of God, are mutually 
exclusive. This has been the claim of science, and the admis- 
sion of religion. No wonder, then, that religion, prompted by 
an unerring instinct, has always looked with suspicion upon all 
attempts to formulate nature. Not that order is incompatible 
with will — for the theist has always held that with Him is no 
variableness, neither shadow of turning — but because this ne- 
cessary working of matter seems to exclude both the action 
and the need of intelligence. Upon this assumption, science at 
once puts on a fixed and fate-like aspect, before which every 
high faith silently withers, and every high emotion cries out in 
mortal anguish. Having made nature over to science, religion 
has been forced to look for God outside of nature ; and, as the 
proofs of ancient birth have accumulated, God has been driven 
farther and farther away. Hence the pertinacity with which 
theists have sought for breaks in the physical chain ; and hence 
it is that, as chasm after chasm has filled up, they have felt as 
if the ground were slipping from under their feet, and the end 
of physical inquiry must be to elevate matter to the throne of 


98 


DESIGN. 


God. But I must confess that I feel rather suspicious of an 
argument for the Divine existence which is based upon nature’s 
disorder and breaks, rather than upon its order and continuity. 
For if the disorder should ever be reduced, and the breaks 
mended, which is not at all unlikely, what then would become 
of the conclusion 1 

I believe that I have here represented the atheistic argument 
fairly. The claim is that a cloud of atoms endowed with defi- 
nite spheres of attraction and repulsion is able to work out all 
the results which seem to us to manifest intelligence and pur- 
pose. As specimens of atomic working, they exhibit the solar 
system and organic development. Teleology is driven out of 
astronomy and biology, and surely it requires little faith to be- 
lieve that advancing knowledge will displace it altogether. Mr. 
Spencer says that the atoms and atomic forces are all he needs 
to build up the universe. 

STow, I have no purpose of running a muck against the nebu- 
lar hypothesis, or of blaspheming the atomic theory; but I 
think it can be easily shown that, even admitting both as facts 
of nature, they necessarily postulate an extra-material power to 
account for their action. 

Nebular Difficulties Heaps upon Heaps. — Let us place ourselves 
in thought back in the nebulous period, and see what will 
happen. The atoms with their attractive and repulsive forces 
are sown through space, constituting a gas almost infinitely 
rarer than the most perfect vacuum we can produce with an 
air-pump. Out of this void and formless gas, the entire physical 
universe has been built up. I say the entire physical universe, 
because if this theory leaves anything unexplained, the teleo- 
logical difficulties which it seeks to escape, all come back in 
full force. It will hardly be claimed that this gas extended 
through infinite space ; and if the claim were made, it would 
paralyze the theory. For in that case no centers of attraction 
could be set up, and all parts being equally drawn in all direc- 
tions no motion could result. The atoms would be powerless 
to initiate motion until some external force overset the equi- 
librium and set up centers of attraction. The original nebula, 
however, is supposed to be finite in extent; let us see what 
will happen on this supposition. It is assumed that it will 
contract ; but why should it not expand ? Gases, so far as we 
know them, tend to indefinite expansion. If this gas follow the 


t 


DESIGN. 


99 


law of gases in general, we should expect it to expand instead 
of contracting. It must do so, indeed, unless the repulsive force 
of the gas is satisfied, in which case it will neither expand nor 
contract, but remain in equilibrium. The only possible result 
of such a warfare of attractive and repulsive forces must be a- 
lifeless balance. There is no more reason why such a gas 
should condense than there is for the condensation of the at- 
mosphere, or of the light-bearing ether. If such a gas does 
contract, it can only be because there is another power than 
attraction and repulsion constantly at work to overturn the 
balance into which they constantly tend to fall. If the astrono- 
mer will not admit a power outside of the atoms, he must be 
content to see his theory perish. 

Can Atoms of Themselves Attract and Repel?— And even sup- 
posing contraction to be possible without the mediation of an 
external power, it is difficult to see how the revolving mass 
can throw off rings in the manner assumed. If an external 
power revolves a body, the centrifugal force can be so increased 
as to overcome the cohesion. In this way water is thrown 
from the rim of a wheel, and grindstones often burst. Profes- 
sor Doremus a few years ago exhibited an experiment illus- 
trating the way in which rings were formed in the evolution of 
the solar system. In all these cases, however, the revolving 
power was external to the mass ; but in the assumed evolution 
of the planets, the revolving force was internal. The cause of 
the revolution was the contraction of the mass, and hence the 
cause of the centrifugal force was also the attraction of the 
mass. Hence, as the centrifugal force increased the attraction 
increased ; and no reason can be given why one should over- 
balance the other. It follows, then, that they must remain in 
constant balance, and a ring could never be detached unless 
an external power be supposed which overturns the equili- 
brium. Here, again, the astronomer is forced to suppose some 
power beyond the attractions and repulsions of his atoms. 

Indeed, no aggregate of atoms whatever can exist as a resist- 
ing body, by means of simple attractions and repulsions. For 
both being central forces, it is demonstrable that both must 
vary inversely as the square of the distance. It follows, then, 
that the atoms of a body are in equilibrium at all possible dis- 
tances, and can offer no resistance to change of form. If you 
halve the distance you double both attraction and repulsion. 


100 


DESIGN. 


It is clear, then, that the atoms can offer no resistance what- 
ever to change of form, because at all distances the existing 
forces are in equilibrium, Mr. Spencer notices this fact, and 
concludes that we don’t know anything about it. The true 
conclusion is, that body under simple attractions and repul- 
sions is impossible. A co-ordinating force outside of the atoms 
must be assumed as the possibility of a resisting mass. 

Are Atoms Self-movable ? — But we have further difficulties with 
this cloud of atoms which claims to be independent. When 
we reach a clear understanding of the conception, it seems to 
involve positive contradictions. We are distinctly taught 
that no atom can move itself — it moves only as it is moved. 
This is the law of inertia — a law, too, which is at least as well 
established as any in all science. In order, then, to conceive 
of these atoms as independent workers, we must conceive of a 
series of dependent motions which, at the same time, de- 
pends on nothing. The motion of each atom depends 
entirely upon the motion of an antecedent atom ; and unless 
we can conceive that a thing should be at the same time depend- 
ent and independent, conditioned and unconditioned, we can- 
not admit the independence of atomic working. 

Atoms Not Independent.— But cannot the totality of the atoms 
be independent, though the individual atoms be conditioned? 
This involves the same contradiction ; and is, besides, in hope- 
less opposition to the doctrine of the equivalence of forces. 
Working force is constantly falling into equilibrium, and is lost 
to the dunamis of the universe ; hence the totality of atoms 
could only come to a stand-still from which they could never 
emerge. If, then, we grant that the atoms, when once in 
motion, can work the machinery of the world, we cannot grant 
the sufficiency of the materialistic explanation until we learn 
what set them in motion. That first motion, that initial action, 
can only be viewed as self-determined, and hence extra-mate- 
% rial. Self-motion there must be. To put it in the atom, removes 
the atom from the category of matter and denies the law of 
inertia. To put it outside the atom admits the insufficiency of 
the atomic explanation. All mechanical motion implies the 
self-moved, and thought cannot stop short of affirming self- 
motion as the explanation of all physical activity. Science can 
choose between positivism and theism ; its atheistic conjurings 


DESIGN. 


101 


must cease. Once upon the metaphysical road there is no 
stopping at the half-way house of atheism. “Atheists must be 
viewed as the most inconsequent of theologians.” 

They Cannot Take Care of Themselves.— But difficulties thicken 
as we advance. We cannot even grant that the atoms can take 
care of themselves after they have been set in motion. I have 
already pointed out that mere attraction and repulsion can only 
result in a dead balance, but a still greater difficulty meets us 
upon nearer examination. The doctrine assumes that no atoms 
are in contact, but are separated by void spaces. It is forced 
to this assumption by the facts of expansion and contraction, 
and also in order to make the conception of motion possible. 
Let us, then, picture one of these atoms as it exists, cut off by 
an absolute void from all its neighbors. What can it do<? 
What influence can it exert upon any other ? Can matter act 
where it is not? across an absolute void? without any 
medium whatever ? Are these possible conceptions ? Can a 
theory which involves such doctrines as these assume to be 
rational? To escape this difficulty, some scientists have pos- 
tulated an ether which penetrates the interatomic spaces and 
serves as the medium of communication. But, if that ether is 
immaterial, this conception is an abandonment of the atomic 
theory as a sufficient explanation. If, on the other hand, it is 
material, the difficulty returns when we inquire into its consti- 
tution. It in turn is conceived as formed of atoms, and these 
atoms are either in contact or not. If in contact, we have a 
plenum , and motion is impossible. If not in contact, we have 
the difficulty of action across a void, and where the actor itself 
is not. But these are impossible and contradictory concep- 
tions. For it is plain that the cause must be where the effect 
is — the force and its working cannot be conceived as separated. 
If, then, the effect of this solitary atom is produced over yon- 
der, the power, the force of the atom must be over yonder 
also ; and the matter of the atom and its forces, are divorced by 
an absolute void. But it is one of the axioms of science, one 
too of which we hear a great deal, that no force can exist apart 
from substance. 

No Force can Exist Apart from Substance.— But if such a concep- 
tion of atomic working does not imply a separate existence, it 
would be hard to say what does. Clearly the force is entirely 


102 


DESION. 


separate from tlie atom and independent of it, when it wanders 
off in this fashion. Besides, since force can exist separately, 
the atom itself has no further function, it is only postulated as 
the base of the forces ; and since it is useless for this purpose, 
it may be allowed to drop out of existence. But as force can- 
not exist apart from substance, so the scientists say, and since 
these forces are independent of the substance of the atom, we 
must look for some other foundation for the working powers 
of nature. The scientists may solve these contradictions at 
their leisure. It would not be difficult to criticise the atomic 
theory in general ; but, however just that conception may be, 
it is sure that this doctrine of atomic action is contradictory 
and self-destructive. I allow the scientist to look upon his 
atoms as centers of attractive and repulsive forces ; and I then 
affirm, plainly and distinctly, that these powers are powerless 
without an extra-atomic power. I affirm that all the working- 
forces of nature, from the attraction ot gravitation down through 
light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, cohesion 
and adhesion, are utterly helpless without the existence of an 
over-ruling, immaterial force by which the scattered atoms are 
co-ordinated and controlled, and by which the atomic forces 
are enabled to work their appropriate effects. I say, then, not 
only that atoms are unable to construct a solar system with- 
out the aid of an immaterial power, not only that they cannot 
keep out of a dead balance of attraction and repulsion without 
an immaterial power; but I say firmly that they cannot effect 
even the slightest motion, without the working of an immate- 
rial power. 

Natural Causes, as Such, Can do Nothing. — To the atheistic objec- 
tion, that we must not postulate any supernatural cause until 
we have found "out all that natural causes can accomplish, I 
answer, that natural causes, as such, can do nothing ; instead of 
being competent to an indefinite amount of work, they are com- 
petent to nothing whatever. I say, then, science, as well as 
religion, postulates as its sole possibility, the existence of a 
spiritual, universal, ever-active power ; and by consequence, a 
spiritual, universal, ever-active Being. To the objection 
(weighty only from its senselessness) that this is metaphysics 
I answer, that it is metaphysics from which there is no escape. 
Science must either adopt positivism, and give up all attempt 
at explanation, or it must accept this conclusion. If we are to 


DESIGN. 


103 


think at all on this subject, and think rationally, we can reach 
no middle ground. Positivism or theism; there is no 
middle ground. The atheistic argument is the exact parallel 
of the renowned snake which began at his tail and swallowed 
himself, leaving zero as the result of the process. The atomic 
theory serves well enough as the elephant which upholds the 
world, but is in equal need of support itself. If our faith is 
sufficiently robust to conceive the atoms as standing alone, we 
may as well dispense with both elephant and tortoise, and poise 
the world on nothing. 

The administration of things being taken out of the atoms 7 
hands, we are prepared to listen with greater equanimity to 
the claim that Mr. Darwin has demonstrated, that purpose is 
needless to explain the complexity of organic existence. We 
have seen how the nebular theory failed in its attempt to be 
independent ; we have now to inquire whether this claim has 
n-ny greater weight of evidence. Considered as a theory, no 
one will claim that Darwinism is established. Very many, and 
at present unanswerable, objections stand out against it ; and 
it is beginning to be apparent that the doctrine, if true, can 
only be true in a greatly modified form. But granting the 
truth of the theory, the claim that it removes the need of a 
guiding intelligence from the development of organic nature is 
a most curious, logical inconsequence. There is not much 
agreement among the disciples of the development theory, and 
hence it is difficult to say what the precise teaching is. Lotze, 
a most able expounder of the doctrine, declares that the theory 
cannot be worked out unless we assume in the original nebu- 
la the seeds of all that afterward appear. Even the seeds of 
life and mind must be scattered there to make the develop- 
ment possible. Mr. Darwin’s strange theory of pangenesis, 
which makes the original germ not only the parent, but the 
actual possessor of endless germs, which are afterward to be 
developed, implies the same assumption. Now surely a view 
which explains evolution by a previous involution, does not 
throw any very brilliant light upon the cause of organic devel- 
opment. Such a doctrine merely removes the question one 
step further back, and, so far from explaining nature, rather 
increases the mystery. 

Is Development Ipward or Downward ? —Whether the doctrine 
implies a necessary progress of organic forms, is also a ques- 


104 


DESIGN. 


tion. Some teach that development is necessarily upward, and 
others will hear nothing of such a doctrine. The naturalists 
may be left to settle this question among themselves; but 
whichever alternative is adopted the denial of purpose is in no 
way warranted. If this development is necessarily upward, 
the only rational explanation would be that such upward 
movement is due to the fact that a supreme intelligence is 
realizing in such development his own pre-determined plan and 
purpose. Mechanism knows nothing of higher and lower; 
and when the blind forces of nature (if there be such) are seen 
holding on an upward course for untold millions of years, ever 
climbing to higher forms and giving birth to growing har- 
mony and adaptation, the only supposition which at all accounts 
for the fact is that there is a controlling purpose at work which 
guides these powers to a foreseen goal. No mechanical neces- 
sity whatever can be shown for the steady progress ; and as 
science increases the time during which the toiling forces 
have been faithful to what can only be described as a plan, 
the mechanical explanation becomes so incredible that it can 
only be accepted by one who is determined to believe whatever 
suits himself, in defiance of all probability and all fact. Let 
Darwinism be true ; if it holds a doctrine of progressive devel- 
opment, it makes a sorry figure in attempting to deny a controll- 
ing purpose. 

Darwin Himself Cautious on the Point. — More commonly, how- 
ever, the theory is held to imply no such necessity. Mr. Dar- 
win himself, I think, will not accept progressive development 
as an integral part of his theory. At all events, those who 
hold it atheistically, expressly repudiate such teaching. With 
them the primitive organism is looked upon as a variable 
which develops in all directions, and those forms live which 
can live. The principle of natural selection, or the survival of 
the fittest, cuts off all unadapted forms, leaving the others to 
survive, and propagate their own peculiarities. Keep up this 
sifting process through indefinite time, and it must be a weak 
imagination which would be unable to conceive that the forms 
of life must become indefinitely various, while their continu- 
ous existence would imply an adaptation to their circum- 
stances. This principle of natural selection, too, would con- 
stantly tend to make this adaptation more complete. As the 
result of such a process we should finally have a world stocked 


DESIGN. 


105 


with the most complex living forms, all displaying a most accu- 
rate adaptation to their condition, and yet this adaptation 
would be entirely unexpressive of purpose. In such case, we 
should be compelled to turn the teleologist’s argument around 
and say, not that organisms are adapted to their surroundings 
in order that they may live, but that they live because they are 
adapted to their surroundings. Mr. Huxley illustrates the ar- 
gument as follows : 

Huxley’s Impression of Things. — “ That which struck the 
present writer most forcibly on his first perusal of the 4 Origin 
of Species,’ was the conviction that teleology, as commonly 
understood, had received its death-blow, for the teleological 
argument runs thus : An organ or organism (A) is precisely- 
fitted to perform a function or purpose (B) ; therefore, it was 
specially constructed to perform that function. In Paley’s 
famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts of the watch 
to the function, or purpose, of showing the time, is held to bo 
the evidence that the watch was specially contrived to that 
end, on the ground that the only cause we know of competent 
to produce such an effect as a watch which shall keep time, is- 
a contriving intelligence adapting the means directly to that 
end. 

His Supposititious method of Evading Argument.— 44 Suppose, how- 
ever, that any one had been able to show that the watch had 
not been made directly by any person, but that it was the result 
of the modification of another watch which kept time butpoorly r 
and that this again had proceeded from a structure which could 
hardly be called a watch at all, seeing that it had no figures on 
the dial and the hands were rudimentary ; and that going back 
and back, in time we came at last to a revolving barrel as the 
earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric ; and imagine 
that it had been possible to show that all these changes had re- 
sulted, first, from a tendency of the structure to vary indefi- 
nitely ; and, secondly, from something in the surrounding world 
which helped all variations in the direction of an accurate time- 
keeper, and checked all those in other directions ; then it is- 
obvious that the force of Paley’s argument would be gone, for 
it would be demonstrated that an apparatus thoroughly well 
adapted to a particular purpose might be the result of a method 
of trial and error worked by unintelligent agents, as well as of 


106 


DESIGN. 


the direct application of the means appropriate to that end by 
an intelligent agent .” — Lay /Sermons , p. 301. 

Bowne’s Rejoinder to this Far-fetched Inference. — I am not 

aware that Paley’s argument necessitates any peculiar concep- 
tion of the method of organic creation. No natural theologian 
pretends to any conception of the mode of the Divine working. 
He only insists that when we find a result which is replete with 
relations and adaptations which are unintelligible without the 
conception of purpose, we must conclude that it is the work of 
purpose. With this fact in mind, consider Mr. Huxley’s illus- 
tration. It, of course, leaves the rudimentary watch unex- 
plained, and also all those purpose-like arrangements in nature 
which make the watch possible. The “method of trial and 
error ” is worked by unintelligent agents, but no account what- 
ever is given of their origin and action. Yet, granting all this 
(Capital to the illustration, it does not get along very well. 
There is a u something in the surrounding world which helps all 
variations in the direction of a good time-keeper, and checks 
all those in other directions.” But when this process is 'kept 
up for a long time, and this variable, indeterminate barrel is 
held to the single direction of a good watch, it begins to look 
as if some power had the creation of a watch in view. Surely, 
if we were told that a florist had established a certain variety 
of flower by carefully selecting specimens which tended in that 
direction, and by rejecting all others, we should hardly feel jus- 
tified in concluding that he had no purpose in such selection. 
The very indetermination which this illustration ascribes to the 
primitive organism, is the strongest reason for introducing a 
controlling plan or purpose, for there is no reason why this va- 
riable should develop up instead of down. There is no reason 
why at any point it should not turn back upon itself and destroy 
all that it had gained. If, then, we put such a germ at the be- 
ginning of things, we are forced to admit that it has developed 
upward, and along lines of order and purpose. It has been 
met and molded by such conditions that the best has proved 
the strongest; and in this way, out of a primitive indeterminate- 
ness, has been brought a most intelligent, orderly and harmo- 
nious system. Why ? Before the doctrine can claim to have 
disproved the existence of purpose in nature, it must answer 
this question. No mechanical necessity can be shown. As- 


DESIGN. 


107 


sume a controlling purpose, and all becomes luminous and in- 
telligible. Deny it, and all is incomprehensible. — B. P . Bowne: 
Pliil . of Spencer 9 pp. 233-54. 

[Master the above, and you possess the weapons that strike death to 
evolution and development, as taught by Tyndall, Spencer, Darwin 
and Huxley. — Ed.] 

Socrates Says Man’s Senses Have a Purpose.— But it is evidently ap- 
parent that He who at the beginning made man, endued him with 
senses because they were good for him; eyes, wherewith to 
behold whatever was visible ; and ears, to hear whatever was 
to be heard; for say, Aristodemus, to what purpose should 
odors be prepared, if the sense of smelling had been denied ? 
or why the distinctions of bitter and sweet, of savory and un- 
savory, unless a palate had been likewise given, conveniently 
placed, to arbitrate between them and declare the difference ? 
Is not that Providence, Aristodemus, in a most eminent man- 
ner conspicuous, which, because the eye of man is so delicate in 
its contexture, hath therefore prepared eyelids like doors, 
whereby to secure it, which extend of themselves whenever it 
is needful, and again close when sleep approaches ? Are not 
these eyelids provided as it were with a fence on the edge of 
them, to keep off the wind and guard the eyes ? Even the eye- 
brow itself is not without its office, but, as a penthouse, is pre- 
pared to turn off the sweat, which, falling from the forehead, 
might enter and annoy that no less tender than astonishing 
part of us. Is it not to be admired that the ears should take 
in sounds of every sort, and yet are not too much filled by 
them 1 That the fore-teeth of the animal should be formed in 
such a manner as is evidently best suited for the cutting of its 
food, as those on the side for grinding it to pieces ? That the 
mouth, through which this food is conveyed, should be placed 
so near the nose and eyes as to prevent the passing unnoticed 
whatever is unfit for nourishment; while Nature, on the con- 
trary, hath set at a distance and concealed from the senses 
all that might disgust or any way offend them? And canst 
thou still doubt, Aristodemus, whether a disposition of parts 
like this should be the work of chance, or of wisdom and con- 
trivance ? 

I have no longer any doubt, replied Aristodemus, and, indeed, 
the more I consider it, the more evident it appears to me that 
man must be the master-piece of some great artificer; carrying 
along with it infinite marks of the love and favor of Him 


108 


DESIGN. 


who hath thus formed it. — Socrates : Xenophon’’ s Memorabilia 7 

i : 4 . 

Paley’s Watch.— In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my 
foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be 
there, I might possibly answer, that for anything I knew to the 
contrary it had lain there forever; nor would it, perhaps, be 
easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had 
found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how 
the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think 
of the answer which I had before given, that for anything I 
knew the watch might have always been there. Yet why 
should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the 
stone — why is it not as admissible in the second case as in the 
first? For this reason, and for no other, namely, that when we 
come to inspect the watch, we perceive — what we could not dis- 
cover in the stone— that its several parts are framed and put to- 
gether for a purpose, that is, that they are so formed and adjust- 
ed as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point 
out the hour of the day ; that if the different parts had been dif- 
ferently shaped from what they are, or placed after any other 
manner, or in any other order than that in which they are 
placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on 
in the machine, or none which would have answered the use 
that is now served by it. To reckon up a few of the plainest 
of these parts and of their offices, all tending to one result : 
We see a cylindrical box containing a coiled elastic spring, 
which, by its endeavor to relax itself, turns round the box. 
We next observe a flexible chain — artificially wrought for the 
sake of flexure — communicating the action ot the spring 
from the box to the fusee. We then find a series of wheels, 
the teeth of which catch in and apply to each other, conducting 
the motion from the fusee to the balance and from the balance 
to the pointer, and at tke same time, by the size and shape of 
those wheels, so regulating that motion as to terminate in 
causing an index, by an equable and measured progression, to 
pass over a given space in a given time. We take notice that 
the wheels are made of brass, in order to keep them from rust ; 
the springs of steel, no other metal being elastic; that 
over the face of the watch there is placed a glass, a mate- 
rial employed in no other part of the work, but in the room of 
which, if there had been any other than a transparent sub- 


DESIGN. 


109 


stance, tlie hour could not be seen without opening the case. 
This mechanism being observed — it requires indeed an examin- 
ation of the instrument, and perhaps some previous knowledge 
of the subject, to perceive and understand it; but being once, 
as we have said, observed and understood, the inference we 
think is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker — that 
there must have existed, at some time and at some place or 
other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose 
which we find it actually to answer, who comprehended its 
construction and designed its use. 

Its Mechanism Would be Unique to Us in Any Case.— Nor would 
it, I apprehend, weaken the conclusion, that we had never seen 
a watch made — that we had never known an artist capable of 
making one — that we were altogether incapable of executing 
such a piece of workmanship ourselves, or of understanding in 
what manner it was performed; all this being no more than 
what is true of some exquisite remains of ancient art, of some 
lost arts, and, to the generality of mankind, of the more curious 
productions of modern manufacture. Does one man in a 
million know how oval frames are turned? Ignorance of this 
kind exalts our opinion of the unseen and unknown artist’s 
skill, if he be unseen and unknown, bat raises no doubt in our 
minds of the existence and agency of such an artist, at some 
former time, and in some place or other. Nor can I perceive 
that it varies at all the inference, whether the question arise 
concerning a human agent or concerning an agent of a different 
species, or an agent possessing in some respects a different 
nature. 

Neither, secondly, would it invalidate our conclusion, that 
the watch sometimes went wrong, or that it seldom went ex- 
actly right. The purpose of the machinery, the design and the 
designer might be evident, and in the case supposed, would be 
evident, in whatever way we accounted for the irregularity of 
the movement, or whether we could account for it or not. It is 
not necessary that a machine be perfect, in order to show 
with what design it was made; still less necessary, where 
the only question is whether it were made with any design at 
all. 

Not, thirdly, would it bring any uncertainty into the argu- 
ment, if there were a few parts of the watch, concerning which 
we could not discover or had not yet discovered in what manner 


110 


DESIGN. 


they conduced to the general effect; or even some parts, con- 
cerning which we could not ascertain whether they conduced 
to that effect in any manner whatever. For, as to the first 
branch of the case, if by the loss, or disorder, or decay of the 
parts in question, the movement of the watch were found in 
fact to be stopped, or disturbed, or retarded, no doubt would 
remain in our minds as to the utility or intention of these parts, 
although we should be unable to investigate the manner ac- 
cording to which, or the connection by which, the ultimate 
effect depended upon their action or assistance ; and the more 
complex the machine the more likely is this obscurity to arise. 
Then as to the second thing supposed, namely, that there were 
parts which might be spared without prejudice to the move- 
ment of the watch, and that we had proved this by experiment, 
these superfluous parts, even if we were completely assured that 
they were such, would not vacate the reasoning which we had 
instituted concerning other parts. The indication of contri- 
vance remained, with respect to them, nearly as it was before. 

The Watch Must Have a Maker. — Kor, fourthly, would any 
man in his senses think the existence of the watch with its 
various machinery accounted for, by being told that it was one 
out of possible combinations of material forms ; that whatever 
he had found in the place where he found the watch, must 
have contained some internal configuration or other ; and that 
this configuration might be the structure now exhibited, name-, 
ly, of the works of a watch, as well as a different structure. 

JSTor, fifthly, would it yield his inquiry more satisfaction to be 
answered that there existed in things a principle of order, 
which had disposed the parts of the watch into their present 
form and situation. He never knew a watch made by the 
principle of order ; nor can he even form to himself an idea of 
what is meant by a principle of order, distinct from the intel- 
ligence of the watchmaker. 

Sixthly, he would be surprised to hear that the mechanism 
of the watch was no proof of contrivance, only a motive to 
induce the mind to think so : 

And not less surprised to be informed, that the watch in his 
hand was nothing more than the result of the laws of metallic 
nature. It is a perversion of language to assign any law as 
the efficient operative cause of anything. A law presupposes 
an agent ; for it is only the mode according to which an agent 


DESIGN. 


Ill 


proceeds ; it implies a power ; for it is tlie order according to 
which that power acts. Without this agent, without this 
power, which are both distinct from itself, the law does noth- 
ing, is nothing. The expression u the law of metallic nature ” 
may sound strange and harsh to a philosophic ear ; but it seems 
quite as justifiable as some others which are more familiar to 
him, such as u the law of vegetable nature,” u the law of animal 
nature,” or, indeed, as u the law of nature ” in general, when 
assigned as the cause of phenomena,' in exclusion of agency 
and power, or when it is substituted into the place of these. 

Neither, lastly, would our observer be driven out of his con- 
clusion or from his confidence in its truth by being told that 
he knew nothing at all about the matter. He knows enough 
for his argument ; he knows the utility of the end ; he knows 
subserviency and adaptation of the means to the end. These 
points being known, his ignorance of other points, his doubts 
concerning other points, affect not the certainty of his reason- 
ing. The consciousness of knowing little need not beget a dis- 
trust of that which he does know. 

A Succession Would Raise His Admiration.— Suppose, in the 
next place, that the person who found the watch should after 
some time discover that, in addition to all the properties which 
he had hitherto observed in it, it possessed the unexpected 
property of producing in the course of its movement another 
watch like itself— the thing is conceivable ; that it contained 
within it a mechanism, a system of parts — a mold, for instance, 
for a complex adjustment of lathes, files and other tools — evi- 
dently and separately calculated for this purpose: let us 
inquire what effect ought such a discovery to have upon his 
former conclusion. 

The first effect would be to increase his admiration of the 
contrivance, and his conviction of the consummate skill of the 
contriver. Whether he regarded the object of the contrivance, 
the distinct apparatus, the intricate, yet in many parts intelli- 
gible mechanism by which it was carried on, he would per- 
ceive in this new observation nothing but an additional reason 
for doing what he had already done— for referring the construc- 
tion of the watch to design and to supreme art. If that con- 
struction without this property, or which is the same thing 
before this property had been noticed, proved intention and 
art to have been employed about it, still more strong would 


112 


DESIGN. 


the proof appear when he came to the knowledge of this fur- 
ther property, the crown and perfection of all the rest. 

Causes Unfolded.— He would reflect, that though the watch 
before him were in some sense the maker of the watch which 
fabricated in the course of its movements, yet it was in a very 
different sense from that in which a carpenter, for instance, is 
the maker of a chair — the author of its contrivance, the 
cause of the relation of its parts to their use. With 
Tespect to these, the first watch was no cause at all to the sec- 
ond ; in no such sense as this was it the author of the consti- 
tution and order, either of the parts which the new watch 
•contained or of the parts by the aid' and instrumentality of 
which it was produced. We might possibly say, but with great 
latitude of expression, that a stream of water ground corn ; 
but no latitude of expression would allow us to say, no stretch 
of conjecture could lead us to think, that the stream of water 
built the mill, though it were too ancient for us to know who 
the builder was. What the stream of water does in the affair 
is neither more nor less than this : by the application of an 
unintelligent impulse to a mechanism previously arranged, 
arranged independently of it and arranged by intelligence, an 
effect is produced, namely, the corn is ground. But the effect 
results from the arrangement. The force of the stream cannot 
be said to be the cause or the author of the effect, still less of 
the arrangement. Understanding and plan in the formation of 
the mill were not the less necessary for any share which the 
water has in grinding the corn ; yet is this share the same as 
that which the watch would have contributed to the produc- 
tion of the new watch upon the supposition assumed in the 
last section. Therefore, 

A Summary of the Argument.— Though it be now no longer 
probable that the individual watch which our observer had 
found was made immediately by the hand of an artificer, yet 
doth not this alteration in anywise affect the inference, that 
an artificer had been originally employed and concerned in the 
production. The argument from design remains as it was. 
Marks of design and contrivance are no more accounted for 
now than they were before. In the same thing, we may ask 
for the cause of different properties. We may ask for the 
cause of the color of a body, of its hardness, of its heat; and 


DESIGN. 


113 


these causes may be all different. We are now asking for the 
cause of that subserviency to a use, that relation to an end, 
which we have remarked in the watch before us. No 
answer is given to this question, by telling us that a preceding 
watch produced it. There cannot be a design without a 
designer ; contrivance without a contriver ; order, without 
choice; arrangement, without anything capable of arranging; 
subserviency and relation to a purpose, without that which 
could intend a purpose. All these imply the presence of in- 
telligence and mind. Nor is anything gained by running the 
difficulty farther back, that is, by supposing the watch before 
us to have been produced by another watch, that from a 
former, and so on indefinitely. We still want a contriver. — 
Paley : Natural Theology , pp. 9-16. 

Dawson Defends Paley Against Huxley.— Huxley, in his “ lay ser- 
mons ” referring to Paley’s argument for design founded on the 
structure of a watch, says that if the watch could be conceived 
to be a product of a less perfect structure improved by natural 
selection, it would then appear to be the “result of a method 
cf trial and error worked by unintelligent agents, as likely as of 
the direct application of the means appropriate to that end, by 
an intelligent agent.” This is a bold and true assertion of the 
actual relation of even this modified evolution to rational and 
practical theism, which requires not merely this God “afar 
off,” who has set the stone of nature rolling and then turned 
His back upon it, but a present God, whose will is the law of 
nature, now as in times past. The evolutionist is really in a 
position of absolute antagonism to the idea of creation, even 
when held with all due allowance for the variations of created 
things within certain limits. 

Perhaps Paley’s old illustration of the watch, as applied by 
Huxley, may serve to show this as well as any other. If the 
imperfect watch, useless as a time-keeper, is the work of the 
-contriver, and the perfection of it is the result of unintelligent 
agents working fortuitously, then it is clear that creation 
and design have a small and evanescent share in the construc- 
tion of the fabric of nature. But is it really so f Can we at- 
tribute the perfection of the watch to “accidental material 
operations ” any more than the first effort to produce such an 
instrument % Paley himself long ago met this view of the case, 

H 


114 


DESIGN. 


but his argument may be extended by the admissions and pleas 
of evolutionists themselves. For example, the watch is alto- 
gether a mechanical thing, and this fact by no means implies 
that it could not be made by an intelligent and spiritual de- 
signer, yet this assumption that physical laws exclude crea^ 
tion and design turns up in almost every page of the evolu- 
tionists. 

Where Palcy Has Beaten the Evolutionists.— Paley has well 
shown that if the watch contained within itself machinery for 
making other watches, this would not militate against his ar- 
gument. It would be so if it could be proved that a piece of 
metal had spontaneously produced an imperfect watch, and 
this a more perfect one, and so on; but this is precisely 
what evolutionists still require to prove with respect both to 
the watch and to man. On the other hand, it is no argu- 
ment for the evolution of the watch that there may be different 
kinds of watches, some more and others less perfect, and that 
ruder forms may have preceded the more perfect. This is 
perfectly compatible with creation and design. Evolutionists, 
however, generally fail to make this distinction. Nor would it 
be any proof of the evolution of the watch to find that, as 
Spencer would say, it was in perfect narmony with its environ- 
ment, as, for instance, that it kept time with the revolution of 
the earth, and contained contrivances to regulate its motion 
under different temperatures, unless it could be shown that the 
earth’s motion and the changes of temperature had been 
efficient causes of the motion and the adjustments of the 
watch; otherwise, the argument would look altogether in 
the direction of design. Nor would it be fair to shut up 
the argument of design to the idea that the watch must 
have suddenly flashed into existence fully formed and in 
motion. It would be quite as much a creation if slowly and 
laboriously made by the hand of an artificer, or if more rapidly 
struck off by machinery ; and if the latter, it would not follow 
that the machine which produced the watch was at all like the 
watch itself. It might have been something very different. 
Finally, when Spencer tries to cut at the root of the whole of 
this argument by affirming that man has no more right to 
reason from himself with regard to his Maker than a watch 
would have to reason from its own mechanical structure and 
affirm the like of its maker, he signally fails. If the watch had 


DESIGN. 


115 


sucli power of reasoning, it would be more than mechanical, and 
would be intelligent like its maker; and in any case, if thus 
reasoning, it came to the conclusion that it was a result of u ac- 
cidental material operations,” it would be altogether mistaken. 
Nor would it be nearer the truth if it held that it was a product 
of spontaneous evolution from an imperfect and comparatively 
useless watch that had been made millions of years before. 

We have taken this illustration of the watch merely as given 
to us by Huxley, and without in the least seeking to overlook 
the distinction between a dead machine and a living organism ; 
but the argument for creation and design is quite as strong as 
in the case of the latter, so long as it cannot be proved by 
actual facts to be a product of derivation from a distinct spe- 
cies. This has not been proved either in the case of man or 
any other species ; and so long as it has not, the theory of 
creation and design is infinitely more rational and scientific 
than that of evolution in any of its forms. — Dawson: The 
Story of the Earth and Man , pp, 348-52. 

Blackie’s View of Paley’s Argument. — Science works in a nar- 
row range, and has no function to meddle with philosophical 
or theological questions at all. The question of design is a 
philosophical question, and the moment a scientific man either 
asserts it or denies it, he walks out of his proper sphere and 
is, or attempts to be, a philosopher. As for Dr. Paley, and 
his simile of the watch, no writer that I know has been more 
grossly abused and made to stand a more unreasonable test in 
the literal interpretation of his words. Hr. Paley — the genius 
of common-sense, as he has been well called — did not say, and 
did not in the remotest degree mean to insinuate, that the 
world is a watch or manufacture in any shape. He merely said 
that as we see and acknowledge design, plan, purpose, and 
calculation in the machinery of a watch, so, unless we are alto- 
gether ignorant and purposely perverse, we must acknowledge 
design, plan, calculation, purpose, in the structure of the human 
body and in other organisms of Nature; and this doctrine, 
expounded more than two thousand years ago by Socrates, the 
wisest of the Greeks, and besung by David, the noblest of the 
Hebrew lyrists, is so strikingly and pervadingly true that no 
subtleties and sophistries, and wretched verbal juggleries of a 
purely negative physical science can hope to overturn it. We 
do not require the atheist, or agnostics, to tell us that Nature 


116 


DESIGN. 


is a growth, not a manufacture ; that God is not a mechanic, 
and so forth ; we know this perfectly well — we happen to have 
been taught, as Christians, that God is a Spirit, and a Spirit 
in whom we live and move and have our being ; but a growth, 
to rise into any congruous proportions, requires design, as 
well as a box, or a house, or any piece of mechanical compagin- 
ation. 

He Reviews Atkinson on Design. — “Man designs ; Nature is/’ 
gays Mr. Atkinson. This is an antithesis merely in words, 
which, to a thinking mind, conveys no meaning. The writer 
should have said, Man makes; Nature is ; though, indeed, in 
the proper sense, man does not even make ; he only uses what 
is. But neither in the making, nor the using, nor the being, is 
there the slightest reason for the exclusion of design. Design 
belongs, and must belong, to all the three ; otherwise, every 
human workshop would become a lumber-room of incoherent 
fragments, and instead of a world everywhere full of reason- 
able law, we should have a lawless chaos and a maundering 
Bedlam. The prejudice against design in the minds of a certain 
class of scientific men arises from two causes: First, because 
mere science does not mount up into the region of final causes, 
and therefore takes upon itself to deny generally, what, for 
its own special purposes, it does not require. Second, because 
some foolish theologians have interpreted a design into certain 
parts of the Divine workmanship, which a little knowledge of 
the scheme of Nature proved to be altogether inadequate. 
Third, because the design which we admire in the scheme of 
Nature is part of a plan comprehending a vast whole, not to be 
interpreted by the hasty inspection of a part ; and those who 
expatiate largely on the final cause of the part as if it were 
the whole, and look at this part also in the light of human con- 
venience and comfort, are justly chargeable with ignorance 
and presumption. God certainly does not do all that he does 
in this vast and complex universe merely for your pleasure or 
mine ; nor because you and I can make profitable application 
of anything in the world does it logically follow that this use 
was in every case an end, and not rather an accident of their 
existence ; but unquestionably he is a most blind person who 
does not see, and a most ungracious person who does not 
acknowledge, as Socrates says, that the gods have done a very 
great deal to make human beings as comfortable as possible. 


DESIGN. 


117 


As to wliat Mr. Atkinson says, that fitness of parts does not 
prove design, because the fact that two halves make a whole, 
may not prove design; the answer is plain, that not every 
adaptation or congruity proves design, but only such a com- 
bination of diverse means to a common end as is absolutely 
impossible to conceive without the directing presence of that 
imperial Unity which we call Mind. Break a bridge in two, 
and join the two halves together again. You say this does not 
indicate design. But did the bridge, as a skillful junction of 
stones, bars or boards, to connect two banks of a river, put 
itself together without design ? or could even the two halves 
of a bridge, or of any other body, have fitted so exactly into a 
whole, if there had not been a shaping and molding power 
behind the materials, to shape them into such a whole ? Let us 
not, therefore, say there is no design, or final cause in the 
works of God, while we admit that no meanest work of man 
can be without it ; but let the manifest truth rather be stated 
thus : the designs of man are petty, partial, and dealing only 
with supplied materials ; the design of God is one, pervading, 
inherent, self-acting, unavoidable . — John Stuart Blackie : Nat- 
ural History of Atheism , pp. 237-41. 

More Doubters Convinced by Paley Than by All the Metaphysicians. 
But what is it which entitles us to rise from these facts to the 
belief in God? In answering this question we are led to dis- 
cover, that in a full statement of the argument it is needful to 
enunciate certain intuitive principles. This circumstance, 
however, should not be argued to show that a statement of the 
traces of design is useless, for it is upon the external facts 
that the intuition proceeds, and it is when these are before the 
mind that the intuition is called into exercise, and produces the 
conviction. More doubters have been convinced by Paley 
than by all the elaborate works on the metaphysics of the 
argument. Still, in a professedly complete exhibition of the 
process, the internal principles should be enunciated. There is 
unfortunately not an absolute agreement among metaphvsicians 
as to what these are— which disagreement of the analysis is by 
no means to be urged as an argument against the reality of 
the principles themselves. Some maintain that we have 
an immediate consciousness of God, or an intuitive belief in 
Him. Others have supposed that there are certain intuitive 
principles which, proceeding from external facts, lead to a 


118 


DESIGN. 


conviction of the existence of God. To this latter we give our 
adherence. There are in the world numberless traces of effects, 
of effects of design, and the intuitive principle of causation 
constrains us to look for a cause in a designing mind . — Me Cosh : 
Method of Divine Government, p. 519. 

Every Man Carries About With Him the Proof of Design.— The 

battle-ground of atheism is not in the field of natural 
science ; meaning by that the study of material pheno- 
mena. The argument from design to an intelligent con- 
triver does not require the knowledge of Cuvier or 
Humboldt to make it satisfactory. Every man carries 
about with him in his own organization a syllogism which 
all the logic in the world can never mend. If his skepti- 
cism will not melt away in such an ocean of evidence, it is 
because it is insoluble. Whatever contrivances have been 
employed, the grand result of an immeasurable whole, all the 
parts of which are fitted together with a foresight and wisdom 
which it mocks the human intellect to attempt to sound, except 
along its shallower edges, remains to be accounted for, and 
Paley’s argument from the watch to its maker illustrates the 
simple course of reasoning which the healthy mind is naturally 
forced to follow. — Dr. 0. W. Holmes : Essays from North Ameri- 
can Eeview, p. 466. 

Force and Action in Their Relation to Each Other.— Every action, 
or series of actions, is referred by the mind to a force, and 
this again to a power. Thus the action of a clock is referred 
to the force of the spring, and this force is the manifestation of 
a power stored in the spring by winding it up, and set free by 
giving the first swing to the pendulum. We may consider 
action as the specific application of force ; force as the transfer 
of power, or power, in transitu ; power itself as the original or 
delegated source of being, or of change in its condition. Thus 
life, which appears as a series of actions, is referred to a force 
commonly called vital, and this to a power, having its center in 
the Divine Being ; for all who recognize a Divinity are agreed 
that all power comes from Him. This is what they mean when 
they call omnipotence one of His attributes. The first mani- 
festations of force are habitually referred to the same original 
source. Thus we say that the Creator gave motion to the 
planets in space, taking it for granted that the Master-hand 


DESIGN. 


119 


alone could impart their original impulse. If, however, we 
are asked why they continue to roll on, we are told that the 
vis inertiae keeps them from stopping. But this is a mere name, 
and we might as well say that the vis motus starts a planet, as 
that vis inertiae keeps it going. A simpler statement is that the 
Divine agency, once in operation, never changes without cause. 
We cannot allow force to be self-sustaining any more than self- 
originating, nor matter itself to be self-subsistent any more 
than self-creating. The apparent uniformity of force, and the 
seeming independent existence of matter, lead us to speak of 
them as if their laws, as we term them, were absolutely and 
eternally inherent. But a law which an omnipotent, omniscient, 
omnipresent Being enforces, is plainly nothing more than the 
Lawgiver himself at work. This is the meaning of that some- 
what startling utterance of Oken, “ The universe is God rota- 
ting.” — Dr. 0. W. Holmes : Essays from North American Re- 
view , p. 440. 

The Endeavor to Personify Forces of Nature is Constantly Breaking 
Down. — The universal prevalence of this idea of purpose in na- 
ture is indicated by the irresistibly tendency which we observe in 
the language of Science to personify the forces, and the combina- 
tions of force by which all natural phenomena are produced. 
It is a great injustice to scientific men — too often committed — 
to suspect them of unwillingness to accept the idea of a Per- 
sonal Creator merely because they try to keep separate the 
language of Science from the language of Theology. But it is 
curious to observe how this endeavor constantly breaks down 
— how impossible it is in describing physical phenomena to 
avoid the phraseology which identifies them with the phenom- 
ena of mind, and is molded on our own conscious Personality 
and Will. It is impossible to avoid this language, simply 
because no other language conveys the impression which 
innumerable structures leave upon the mind. Take, for exam- 
ple, the word u contrivance.” How could science do without 
it? How. could the great subject of Animal Mechanics be 
dealt with scientifically without continual reference to Law as 
that by which, and through which, special organs are formed 
for the doing of special work ? What is the very definition of 
a machine ? Machines do not increase force, they only adjust 
it. The very idea and essence of a machine is that it is a con- 
trivance for the distribution of force with a view to its bearing 


120 


DESIGN. 


on special purposes. A man’s arm is a macliine in which the 
law of leverage is supplied to the vital force for the purposes of 
prehension. We shall see presently that a bird’s wing is a 
machine in which the same law is applied, under the most com- 
plicated conditions, for the purpose of flight. Anatomy sup- 
plies an infinite number of similar examples. It is impossible 
to describe or explain the facts we meet with in this or in any 
other branch of Science without investing the “laws” of 
Nature with something of that Personality which they do actu- 
ally reflect, or, without conceiving of them as partaking of 
those attributes of mind which we everywhere recognize in 
their working and results. — Argyll’s Reign of Law , p. 89. 

What Natural Selection Cannot Do.— Mr. Darwin’s theory seem& 
to be far better than a mere theory — to be an established scien- 
tific truth — in so far as it accounts, in part at least, for the suc- 
cess and establishment and spread of new Forms when they 
have arisen. But it does not even suggest the law under which,, 
or by which, or according to which, such new Forms are intro- 
duced. Natural Selection can do nothing except with the 
materials presented to its hands. It cannot select among the 
things open to selection. Natural Selection can originate 
nothing ; it can only pick out and choose among the things which 
are originated by some other law. Strictly speaking, there- 
fore, Mr. Darwin’s theory is not a theory on the Origin of Spe- 
cies at all, but only a theory on the causes which lead to the 
relative success or failure of such new Forms as may be born 
into the world. — Argyll’s Reign of Law , p. 218. 

Mental Purpose and Physical Cause Not Antagonistic.— It must 
always be remembered that the two ideas — that of a Physical 
Cause and that of a Mental Purpose — are not antagonistic; 
only the one is larger and more comprehensive than the other. 
Let us take a case. In many animal frames there are what 
have been called “Silent Members” — members which have 
no reference to the life or use of the animal — but only to the 
general pattern on which all vertebrate skeletons have been 
formed. Mr. Darwin, when he sees such a member in an ani- 
mal, concludes with certainty that this animal is the lineal 
descendant by ordinary generation of some other animal in 
which that member was not silent but turned to use. Profes- 
sor Owen, taking a larger and wider view, would say, without 


DESIGN. 


121 


pretending to explain how its presence is to be accounted for 
physically, that the silent member has relation to a general 
purpose or plan which can be traced from the dawn of Life, 
but which did not receive its full accomplishment until man 
was born. This is certain. The other is a theory. The 
assumed physical cause may be true or false. But in any case 
the mental purpose and design — the conformity to an abstract 
idea — this is certain. — Argyll’s Reign of Law , p. 32. 

Arc Animal Organs Developed by Use ?— The poison of a deadly 
snake — let us for a moment consider what this is. It is a 
secretion of definite chemical properties which have reference 
— not only —not even mainly — to the organism of the animal in 
which it is developed, but specially to the organism of another 
animal which it is intended to destroy. Some naturalists have 
a vague sort of notion that, as regards mechanical weapons, or 
organs of attack, they may be developed by use — that legs may 
become longer by fast running, teeth sharper and longer by 
much biting. Be it so ; this law of growth, if it exist, is but 
itself an instrument whereby purpose is fulfilled. But how 
will this law of growth adjust a poison in one animal with such 
subtle knowledge of the organization of another that the 
deadly virus shall in a few minutes curdle the blood, benumb 
the nerves, and rush in upon the citadel of life? — Argyll’s Reign 
of Laic, p . 34. 

Some Things, like Bird’s Feathers, for Ornament, as well as Use.— 

Mere ornament and variety of form, and these for their own 
sake, is the only principle or rule with reference to which Cre- 
ative Power seems to have worked in these wonderful and 
beautiful birds. And if we cannot account for the differences 
in the general style and plan of ornament followed in the 
whole group, by referring them to any sort of use in the strug- 
gle for existence, still less is it possible to account, on this 
principle, for the kind of difference which separates from each 
other the different species in each of the genera. These differ- 
ences are often little more than a mere difference of color. 
The radiance of the ruby or topaz in one species, is replaced 
perhaps by the radiance of the emerald or the sapphire in 
another. In all other respects the different species are some- 
times almost exact counterparts of each other. 

What Use lias a Crest or Spangle in the Struggle for Existence ?— 
Now, what explanation does the law of Natural Selection give — 


122 


DESIGN. 


T will not say of the origin, but even of the continuance and 
preservation — of such specific varieties as these. None what- 
ever. A crest of topaz is no better in the struggle for exist- 
ence than a crest of sapphire. A frill ending in spangles of 
the emerald is no better in the battle of life than a frill ending 
in spangles of the ruby. A tail is not affected for the 
purposes of flight, whether its marginal or its central feathers 
are decorated with white. It is impossible to bring such varie- 
ties into relation with any physical law known to us. It has 
relation, however, to a Purpose, which stands in close analogy 
with our own knowledge of Purpose in the works of man. 
Mere beauty and mere variety, for their own sake, are objects 
which we ourselves seek when we can make the forces of nature 
subordinate to the attainment of them. — Argyll’s Reign of 
Law, pp. 232-5. 

Where Proof for Design is Most Distinctly Shown.— The proof of 
Design, as shown in the works of Creation, is seen most clearly, 
not in mere physical arrangement but in the structure of or- 
ganized things — in the constitution of plants and animals. In 
those parts of nature, the evidences of intelligent purpose, 
of wise adaptation, of skillful selection of means to ends, of 
provident contrivance, are, in many instances, of the most 
striking kind. Such, for example, are the structure of the 
human eye, so curiously adapted for its office of seeing; the 
muscles, cords and pullies by which the limbs of animals are 
moved, exceeding far the mechanical ingenuity shown in human 
inventions ; the provisions which exist, before the birth of off- 
spring, for its sustenance and well-being when it shall have 
been born — these are lucid and convincing proofs of an Intelli- 
gent Creator, to which no ordinary mind can refuse its convic- 
tion. Nor is the evidence, which we here recognize, deprived 
of its force, when we see that many parts of the structure of 
animals, though adapted for particular purposes, are yet framed 
as a portion of a system which does not seem, in its general 
form, to have any bearing on such purposes. The beautiful 
contrivances which exist in the skeleton of man, and the 
contrivances, possessing the same kind of beauty, in the skele- 
ton of a sparrow, do not appear to any reasonable person less 
beautiful because the skeleton of a man, and of a sparrow, have 
an agreement, bone for bone, for which we see no reason, 
and which appears to us to answer no purpose. The way in 


DESIGN. 


123 


which the human hand and arm are made capable of their in- 
finite variety of use, by the play of the radius and ulna, the 
bones of the wrist and the fingers, is not the less admirable, 
because we can trace the representatives and rudiments of each 
of these bones, in cases where they answer no such ends; in 
the foreleg of the pig, the ox— the horse, or the seal. The 
provision for feeding the young creature, which is made, with 
such bounteous liberality, and such opportune punctuality, by 
the breasts of the mother, has not any doubt thrown upon its 
reality, by the teats of male animals and the paps of man, which 
answer no such purpose. That in these cases there is mani- 
festly a wider plan, which does not show any reference to the 
needs of particular cases; as well as peculiar contrivances 
for the particular cases, does not disturb our impression of 
design in each case. 

Most Animals Formed On the Same Plan.— Why should so 
large a portion of the animal kingdom, intended, as it seems, 
for such different fields of life and modes of living— beasts 
birds, fishes — still have a skeleton of the same plan, and even 
of the same parts, bone for bone ; though many of the parts, 
in special cases, appear to be altogether useless (namely, the 
vertebrate plan) ? We cannot tell. Our naturalists and com- 
parative anatomists, it would seem, cannot point out any defi- 
nite end, which is answered by making so many classes of ani- 
mals on this one vertebrate plan. And since they cannot do 
this, and since we cannot tell why animals are so made, we 
must be content to say that we do not know ; and, therefore, to 
leave this feature in the structure of animals out of our argu- 
ment for design. Hence, we do not say that the making of 
beasts, birds, and fishes, on the same vertebrate plan, proves 
design in the Creator, in any way in which we can understand 
design. That plan is not of itself a proof of design; it is 
something in addition to the proofs of design : a general law 
of the animal creation, established, it may be, for some other 
reason. But this common plan being given, we can discern 
and admire, in every kind of animal, the manner in which the 
common plan is adapted to the particular purpose which the 
animal’s kind of life involves. * * * * The general law is 
molded to the special purpose, at the proper stage ; and this 
play of general laws, and special contrivances, into each other’s 
provinces, though it may make the phenomena a little more 


124 


DESIGN. 


complex, and modify our notion as to the mode of the Crea- 
tor’s working, will not, in philosophical minds, disturb the 
conviction that there is design in the special adaptations; 
besides which, some other feature of the operation of the 
Creative Mind may be suggested by the prevalence of general 
laws in the Creation. — Dr. Whewell: Plurality of Worlds , pp. 
239-41. 

Deepest Fallacy of All.— But the deepest fallacy of all is the 
assumption of natural selection as a cause . It is not a cause 
at all. It is only a set of conditions. Selection is an act of 
mind, and the selection which takes place in the survival of the 
fittest is a method of intelligent will. But we have no proof 
that this is a method by which even intelligent will ever causes 
a transmutation of species. We have cited many proofs 
opposed to this hypothesis. Neither can direct physical influ- 
ences, proceeding from the environment, be viewed in the light 
of efficient causes of biological phenomena. They are only a 
set of conditions: we may denominate them conditioning 
causes, but this implies an efficient cause. * * * * The 
efficient force producing modifications having reference to 
physical surroundings, is not only a force acting within, it is 
a force acting intelligently and beneficently; and if it be 
demanded how we dare attribute intelligence and beneficence 
to a force so hopelessly inscrutable, we demand of the objector 
how he dare dishonor the deepest intuitions of his own soul, 
and brave all the consequences of so doing. — Winchell : Evo- 
lution, pp. 96-7. 

More to Do Than to Class Phenomena. — Physicists seem to think 
that when they have classified the phenomena of nature into 
bundles, and ticketed them with high-sounding names, and laid 
them on the shelves of systems, they have explained the phe- 
nomena. When reason asks who or what produced the phenom- 
ena, and for what end or purpose they were produced, a claim 
is set up that the classification explains all that. When this 
is exposed, we are gravely told that it is unscientific to inquire 
concerning the efficient cause of phenomena, or to ask who 
produced all this, and it is especially unscientific to inquire into 
the final cause or for what purpose was all this done. The 
physicist well knows that if these queries are pressed, there is 
no avoiding intelligent causation in the universe; hence, the at- 


DESIGN. 


125 


tempt to silence them. But men will ask these questions. 
They regard them as the goal of science. The work of the 
physicist is but the means and steps to these higher ends, the 
real object of all scientific research. Physical science is utterly 
impotent to settle these queries, the only useful end of physical 
investigation. Reason alone can settle them by means of 
metaphysics and religion. * * * * * Reason insists that 
the phenomena that physical science has reduced to a system, 
is the product of mind, or mind could not reduce them to 
system . — Clark Braden : Problem of Problems , p. 51. 

What Produced the First Protoplasm 1 — Here we have in a glass 
vessel so much hydrogen and oxygen, into which we discharge 
an electric spark, and water is the result. Now, what analogy is 
it possible to perceive between this production of water by 
external experiment and the production of protoplasm by pro- 
toplasm ? The discrepancy is so palpable that it were imperti- 
nent to enlarge on it. The truth is just this, that the measured 
and mixed gases, the vessel, and the spark, in the one case, are as 
unlike the fortuitous food, the living organs, and the long 
process of assimilation in the other case, as the product water 
is unlike the product protoplasm. No ! That the action of 
the electric spark should be unknown is no reason why we 
should not insist on protoplasm for protoplasm, or life for life. 
Protoplasm can only be produced by protoplasm, and each of 
all the innumerable varieties of protoplasm, only by its own 
kind. For the protoplasm of the worm we must go to the 
worm, and for that of the toad-stool to the toad-stool. In 
fact, if all living beings come from protoplasm, it is 
quite as certain that but for living beings, protoplasm 
would disappear. Without an egg you cannot have a 
hen — that is true; but it is equally true that, without 
a hen, you cannot have an egg. So in protoplasm ; 
which, consequently, in the production of itself, offers no 
analogy to the production, or precipitation by the electric 
spark, not of itself, but of water. Besides, if for protoplasm, 
pre-existing protoplasm is always necessary, how was there 
'ever a first protoplasm ? — Professor Stirling: Regards Pro- 

toplasm, p. 55. 

Bad Symptoms of Evolution.— This evolutionist doctrine is 
itself one of the strangest phenomena of humanity. It exist- 


126 


DESIGN. 


ed, and most naturally, in the oldest philosophy and poetry, in 
connection with the crudest and most uncritical attempts of 
the human mind to grasp the system of nature ; but that in 
our day a system destitute of any shadow of proof, and sup- 
ported merely by vague analogies and figures of speech, and by 
the arbitrary and artificial coherence of its own parts, should 
be accepted as a philosophy, and should find able adherents to 
string upon its thread of hypothesis, our vast and weighty 
stores of knowledge, is surpassingly strange. It seems to 
indicate that the accumulated facts of our age have gone alto- 
gether beyond its capacity for generalization ; and but for the 
vigor which one sees everywhere, it might be taken as an 
indication that the human mind has fallen into a state of se- 
nility, and in its dotage mistakes for science the imaginations 
which were the dreams of its youth. 

What It Aspires To. — In many respects, these speculations are 
important and worthy of the attention of thinking men. They 
seek to revolutionize the religious beliefs of the world, and if 
accepted would destroy most of the existing theology and 
philosophy. They indicate tendencies among scientific think- 
ers, which, though probably temporary, must, before they 
disappear, descend to lower strata, and reproduce themselves 
in grosser forms, and with most serious effects on the whole 
structure of society. With one class of minds they constitute 
a sort of religion, which so far satisfies the craving for truths 
higher than those which relate to immediate wants and pleas- 
ures. With another and perhaps larger class, they are accept- 
ed as affording a welcome deliverance from all scruples of 
conscience and fears of a hereafter. In the domain of science 
evolution has like tendencies. 

What It Docs. — It reduces the position of man, who becomes 
a descendant of inferior animals, and a mere term in a series 
whose end is unknown. It removes from the study of nature 
the ideas of final cause and purpose; and the evolutionist, 
instead of regarding the world as a work of consummate plan, 
skill, and adjustment, approaches nature as he would a chaos 
of fallen rocks, which may present forms of castles and gro- 
tesque profiles of men and animals, but they are all fortuitous 
and without significance. It obliterates the fine perception of 
differences from the mind of the naturalist, and resolves all 


DESIGN. 


127 


the complicated relations of living things into some simpler 
idea of descent with modification. It thus destroys the 
possibility of a philosophical classification, reducing all things 
to a mere series, and leads to a rapid decay in systematic zo- 
ology and botany, which is already very manifest among the 
disciples of Spencer and Darwin in England. The e fleet of 
this will be, if it proceeds further, in a great degree to destroy 
the educational value and popular interest attaching to these 
sciences, and to throw them down at the feet of a system of 
debased metaphysics. As redeeming features in all this, are 
the careful study of varietal lorms, and the inquiries as to the 
limit of species, which have sprung from these discussions 
and the harvest of which will be reaped by the true naturalists 
of the future. ******* 

On What Basis is It Founded? — Limiting ourselves in the first 
place to theories of evolution, and to these as explaining the 
origin of species of living beings, and especially of man, we 
naturally first inquire as to the basis on which they are found- 
ed. Now, no one pretends that they rest on facts actually 
observed, for no one has ever observed the production of even 
one species. Nor do they even rest, like the deductions of 
theoretical geology, on the extension into past time of causes 
of change now seen to be in action. Their probability depends 
entirely on their capacity to account hypothetically for certain 
relations of living creatures to each other, and to the world 
without; and the strongest point of the arguments of their 
advocates is the accumulation of cases of such relations sup- 
posed to be accounted for. Such being the kind of argument 
with which we have to deal, we may first inquire what we are 
required to believe as conditions of the action of evolution, 
and secondly, to what extent it actually does explain the phe- 
nomena. 

What Evolutionists arc Required to Assume.— In the first place, 
as evolutionists, we are required to assume certain forces, or 
materials, or both, with which evolution shall begin. Darwin, 
in his Origin of Species, went so far as to assume the existence 
of a few of the simpler types of animals ; but this view, of course, 
was only a temporary resting-place for his theory. Others assume 
a primitive protoplasm, or physical basis of life, and arbitrarily 
assigning to this substance properties now divided between 


128 


DESIGN. 


organized and unorganized, and between dead and living mat- 
ter, find no difficulty in deducing all plants and animals from 
it. Still, even this cannot have been the ultimate material. It 
must have been evolved from something. We are thus brought 
back to certain molecules of star-dust, or certain conflicting 
forces, which must have had self-existence, and must have 
potentially included all subsequent creatures. Otherwise, if 
with Spencer we hold that God is u unknowable,” and creation 
u unthinkable,” we are left suspended on nothing over a bot- 
tomless void, and must adopt as the initial proposition of our 
philosophy, that all things were made out of nothing, and by 
nothing: unless we prefer to doubt whether anything exists, 
and to push the doctrine of relativity to the unscientific 
extreme of believing that we can study the relations of 
things non-existent or unknown. So we must allow the evo- 
lutionist some small capital to start with; observing, however, 
that self-existent matter, in a state of endless evolution, is 
something of which we cannot possibly have any definite con- 
ception. 

What Is Demanded. — Being granted thus much, the evolutionist 
next proceeds to demand that we shall also believe in the in- 
definite variability of material things, and shall set aside all 
idea that there is any difference in kind between the different 
substances which we know. They must all be mutually con- 
vertible, or at least derivable from some primitive material. It 
is true that this is contrary to experience. The chemist holds 
that matter is of different kinds, that one element cannot be 
converted into another ; and he would probably smile if told 
that, even in the lapse of enormous periods of time, limestone 
could be evolved out of silica. He may think that this is very 
different from the idea that a snail can be evolved from an 
oyster, or a bird from a reptile. But the zoologist will inform 
him that species of animals are only variable within certain 
limits, and are not transmutable, in so far as experience and 
experiment are concerned. They have their allotropic forms, 
but cannot be changed into one another. 

But if we grant this second demand, the evolutionist has a 
third in store for us. We must also admit that by some inevit- 
able necessity the changes of things must in the main take 
place in one direction, from the more’ simple to the more 
complex, from the lower to the higher. At first sight, this seems 


DESIGN. 


129 


not only to follow from the previous assumptions, but to accord 
with observation. Do not all living things rise from a simpler 
to a more complex state? Has not the history of the earth 
displayed a gradually increasing elevation and complexity? 
But, on the other hand, the complex organism becoming mature, 
resolves itself again into the simple germ, and finally is dis- 
solved into its constituent elements. The complex returns 
into the simple, and what we see is not an evolution, but a 
revolution. In like manner, in geological time, the tendency 
seems to be ever to disintegration and decay. This we see every- 
where, and find that elevation occurs only by the introduction 
of new species in a way which is not obvious, and which may 
rather imply the intervention of a cause from without ; so that 
here also we are required to admit as a general principle what 
is contrary to experience. 

If, however, we grant the evolutionist these postulates, we 
must next allow him to take the facts of botany and zoology 
out of their ordinary connection, and thread them like a string 
of beads, as Herbert Spencer has done in his u Biology” on the 
threefold cord thus fashioned. This done, we next find, as 
might have been expected, certain gaps or breaks which 
require to be cunningly filled with artificial material, in order 
to give an appearance of continuity to the whole. 

Some Gaps to Fill — First, Between Dead and Living Matter. — The 
first of these gaps which we notice is that between dead and 
living matter. It is easy to fill this with such a term as proto- 
plasm, which includes matter both dead and living, and so to 
Ignore this distinction ; but, practially, we do not yet know as a 
possible thing the elevation of matter without the agency 
of a previous living organism, from that plane in which it is 
subject merely to physical force, and is unorganized, to that 
where it becomes organized, and lives. Under that strange 
hypothesis of the origin of life from meteors, with which Sir 
William Thomson closed his address at a late meeting of the 
British Association, there was concealed a cutting sarcasm 
which the evolutionists felt. It reminded them that the men 
who evolve all things from physical forces do not yet know 
how these forces can produce the phenomena of life even in 
its humblest forms. It is true that the scientific world has 
foeen again and again startled by the announcement of the pro- 
I 


130 


DESIGN. 


duction of some of the lowest forms of life, either from dead 
organic matter, or from merely mineral substances ; but in 
every case heretofore the effort has proved as vain as the 
analogies attempted to be set up between the formation of 
crystals and that of organized tissues are fallacious. 

That Between Animal and Vegetable Life. — A second gap is 
that which separates vegetable and animal life. These are 
necessarily the converse of each other ; the one deoxidizes and 
accumulates, the other oxidizes and expends. Only in reproduc- 
tion or decay does the plant simulate the action of the animal, 
and the animal never in its simplest forms assumes the func- 
tions of the plant. Those obscure cases in the humbler 
spheres of animal and vegetable life which have been supposed 
to show a union of the two kingdoms, disappear on investigation. 
This gap can, I believe, be filled up only by an appeal to our 
ignorance. There may be, or may have been, some simple 
creature unknown to us, on the extreme verge of the plant 
kingdom, that was capable of passing the limit and becoming 
an animal. But no proof of this exists. It is true that the 
primitive germs of many kinds of humble plants and animals are 
so much alike, that much confusion has arisen in tracing their 
development. It is also true that some of these creatures can 
subsist under very dissimilar conditions, and in very diverse 
states, and that, under the specious name of Biology, we some- 
times find a mass of these confusions, inaccurate observations 
and varietal differences made to do duty for scientific facts. 
But all this does not invalidate the grand primary distinction 
between the animal and the plant, which should be thoroughly 
taught and illustrated to all young naturalists, as one of the 
best antidotes to the fallacies of the evolutionist school. 

Between Species. — A third is that between any species of animal 
or plant and any other species. It was this gap, and this only, 
which Darwin undertook to fill up by his great work on the 
Origin of Species ; but, notwithstanding the immense amount of 
material thus expended, it yawns as wide as ever, since it must 
be admitted that no case has been ascertained in which an in- 
dividual of one species has transgressed the limits between it 
and other species. However extensive the varieties pro- 
duced by artificial breeding, the essential characters of the 
species remain and even its minor characters may be repro- 


DESIGN. 


131 


duced, while the barriers established in nature between species, 
by the laws of reproduction, seem to be absolute. 

With regard to species, however, it must be observed that 
naturalists are not agreed as to what constitutes a species. 
Many so-called species are probably races or varieties, and one 
benefit of these inquiries has been to direct attention to the 
proper discrimination of species from varieties among animals 
and plants. The loose discrimination of species, and the ten- 
dency to multiply names, have done much to promote evolu- 
tionist views; but the researches of the evolutionists them- 
selves have shown that we must abandon transmutation of 
true species as a thing of the present ; and if we imagine it to 
have occurred, must refer it to the past. 

Between Nature of Animal and Man.— Another gap is that 
between the nature of the animal and the self-conscious, rea- 
soning, moral nature of man. We not only have no proof that 
any animal can, by any force in itself, or by any merely physi- 
cal influences from without, rise to such a condition ; but the 
thing is in the highest degree improbable. It is easy to affirm, 
with the grosser materialists, that thought is a secretion of 
brain, as bile is of the liver ; but a moment’s thought shows that 
no real analogy obtains between the cases. We may vaguely 
suppose, with Darwin, that the continual exercise of such 
powers as animals possess, may have developed those of man. 
But our experience of animals shows that their intelligence 
differs essentially from that of man, being a closed circle ever 
returning into itself ; while that of man is progressive, inven- 
tive, and accumulative, and can no more be correlated with 
that of the animal than the vital phenomena of the animal with 
those of the plant. ISTor can the gap between the higher relig- 
ious and moral sentiments of man, and the instinctive affec- 
tions of the brutes, be filled up with that miserable ape imag- 
ined by Lubbock, which, crossed in love, or pining with cold 
and hunger, conceived, for the first time in its poor addled 
pate, “ the dread of evil to come,” and so became the father of 
theology. This conception, which Darwin gravely adopts, 
would be most ludicrous, but for the frightful picture which it 
gives of the aspect in which religion appears to the mind of 
the evolutionist. 

The reader will now readily perceive that the simplicity and 


132 


DESIGN. 


completeness of the evolutionist theory entirely disappear 
when we consider the improved assumptions on which it is 
based, and its failure to connect with each other some of the 
most important facts in nature ; that, in short, it is not in any 
true sense a philosophy, but merely an arbitrary arrangement 
of facts in accordance with a number of unproved hypotheses. 
Such philosophies, u falsely so-called,’ 7 have existed ever since 
man began to reason on nature, and this last of them is one of 
the weakest and most pernicious of the whole. Let the reader 
take up either of Darwin’s great books, or Spencer’s “ Biol- 
ogy,” and merely ask himself as he reads each paragraph, 
“What is assumed here and what is proved ? ” and he will find 
the whole fabric melt away like a vision . — Dawson : The Story 
of the Earth and Man, pp. 317-330. 

Argument of Design Greatly Lost Sight of.— I feel profoundly con- 
vinced that the argument of design has been greatly too much 
lost sight of in recent zoological speculations. Beaction 
against the frivolities of teleology, such as are to be found, not 
rarely, in the notes of the learned commentators on “Paley’s 
Natural Theology,” has, I believe, had a temporary effect of 
turning attention from the solid irrefragible argument so well 
put forward in that excellent old book. But overpowering proof 
of intelligence and benevolent design lie all around us, and if 
ever perplexities, whether metaphysical or scientific, turn us 
away from them for a time, they come back upon us with 
irresistible force, showing to us through nature the influence 
of a free will, and teaching us that all living beings depend upon 
one ever-acting Creator and Euler . — Sir William Thomson : 
Presidents Address at British Association ; Edinburgh, 1871. 

Agassiz Gives Proof Against Evolution.— I will only sum up my 
evidences in a few sentences. The physical causes are the 
same now as they were before. Chemical agencies, physical 
agencies, act now as they have acted from the beginning. We 
have the evidence of this in the identical character of the rocks 
of the older and more recent formations ; we have evidence of 
it in the chemical identity of the materials of which celestial 
bodies are formed, of which the more recent investigations of 
physicists have given us satisfactory demonstrations. The 
physical world remains the same. The laws which govern it 
remain the same, and from the beginning until now they have 


DESIGN. 


133 


acted in the same way. Are, then, the different animals which 
have existed at different times, and which differ in the most 
varied manner, the result of causes which do not vary, which 
act ever in the same manner. This is contrary to all argument, 
contrary to any evidence we have. We cannot ascribe diversi- 
fied results to uniform causes. We cannot ascribe the cause 
of certain facts to agencies the action of which is known to us. 
Physicists and chemists know perfectly well what electricity, 
what light, what magnetism can produce. They know perfectly 
well what are the possible combinations between chemical ele- 
ments ; and they know perfectly well that these various combina- 
tions and these various causes are different from the causes 
whose effects we witness in the animal kingdom. Therefore, I 
say that it is not logical to ascribe the diversity which exists 
among living beings to causes which exhibit uniformity of nature 
and uniformity of action. I can conceive only one possible 
cause, and that is the intervention of mind in such a way that 
it shall produce what we have seen. We know perfectly well 
how the human mind acts ; how free it is : and how, in its mani- 
festation, we recognize the stamp of him who manifests himself. 
In the works of the highest intellect, we recognize the peculiar 
mode and manner in which his mind manifests itself. In the 
poet, in the painter, in the architect, in the sculptor, at 
all times we see this manifestation. Now, why should 
we not have something of the same kind in nature ? 
Mind is not a manifestation of matter. It is something 
independent of it. To the extent to which we know its 
freedom, to the extent to which we can maintain independence 
of certain influences, to that extent, and in a similar 
manner, do I conceive the intervention of mind in the pro- 
duction of living beings for all time, upon a plan laid out and 
carried out from the beginning, with reference to an end, and 
that the end is man, is seen in the relation which man bears to 
the lowest vertebrates, the fishes. That there is a reference to 
man, is seen from the gradation which we observe through all 
times, from the beginning to the end. That this cannot be the 
result of merely physical conditions is further shown by the 
fact, which is constantly recurring, of the transformations re- 
produced every day through the whole animal kingdom, in the 
production of new individuals. 


134 


DESIGN. 


All Living Beings Born of Eggs.— And here I come to the closing 
evidence I would submit. All living beings are born of eggs, 
and developed from eggs. All end their growth in changes 
which have begun with the egg. Every successive generation 
begins anew with this egg. Since there have been men or 
quadrupeds on earth, since animals have existed, they have re- 
produced in every generation all the changes in their growth 
and transformation which are characteristic of their race. 
Now, see what this amounts to. There are several hundred 
thousand different kinds of animals living on this globe of the 
different types. Every one of them has its line of develop- 
ment. Every sparrow begins with the egg, and goes through 
all the changes which are characteristic of sparrow life, until it is 
capable of producing new eggs, which will go through the same 
change. Every butterfly comes from the egg, which produces 
the caterpillar, which becomes a chrysalis, and then a butterfly, 
laying eggs to go through the same changes. So with all ani- 
mals, whether of the higher or lower type. In fact, the animal 
kingdom, as it is now, is undergoing greater changes every 
year than the whole animal kingdom has passed through from 
the beginning until now; and yet we never see one of these 
animals swerve from the plan pointed out, or produce anything 
else than that which is like itself. This is the great fact. 
Every being reproduces itself, under conditions which are as 
varied as they have been from the beginning of the world until 
now ; and yet they do not change. Why is that ? Because, by 
nature they are not changeable. That is what we must infer. 
And if those which live now are not changeable, and do not 
pass from one to another, though they represent all the changes 
which animals can pass through, is it logical to assume that 
those of early ages have become what we see now in con- 
sequence of changes in successive generations? Have the 
laws of nature changed in such a manner that what does not 
take place now has taken place in early times ? I say, no. I 
say, just as the cycle, which every animal passes through in its 
development from the egg to its perfect condition, returns to 
the plan impressed upon that animal by the Creator, just so 
have the various forms, the remains of which we find preserved 
in the rocks, been from the beginning the steps through which 
it had pleased the Creator to carry the animal kingdom up to 
man, that being made in His own image, who is endowed with 


DESIGN. 


135 


a spirit akin to His, by virtue of which alone we can under- 
stand nature. Were we not made in the image of the Creator, 
did we not possess a spark of that divine Spirit which is a 
Godlike inheritance, why should we understand nature ? Why 
is it that nature is not to us a sealed book? It is because we 
are akin to the world, not only the physical and the animal 
world, but to the Creator himself, that we can read the world 
and understand that it comes from God. — Agassiz : Lectures on 
the Amazon Valley, reported in the New York Tribune-Extra. 

Ilugh Miller’s Views. — In an age in which a class of writers, 
not without their influence in the world of letters, would fain 
repudiate every argument derived from design , and denounce 
all who hold with Paley and Chalmers, as anthropomorphists, 
that labor to create for themselves a god of their own type 
and form, it may not be altogether unprofitable to contemplate 
the wonderful parallelism which exists between the Divine and 
human systems of classification, and — remembering that the 
geologists who have discovered the one, had no hand in assist- 
ing the naturalists and phytologists who framed the other — 
soberly to inquire whether we have not a new argument in 
the fact for an identity in constitution and quality of the 
Divine and human minds — not a mere fanciful identity, the result 
of a disposition on the part of man to imagine to himself a 
God bearing his own likeness, but an identity real and actual, 
and the result of that creative act by which God formed man 
in His own image. — Hugh Miller : Testimony of Rocks, p. 36. 

Lecky Says Matter is Governed by Mind.— This conception, 
which exhibits the universe rather as an organism than a 
mechanism, and regards the complexities and adaptations it 
displays rather as the results of gradual development from 
within than of an interference from without, is so novel, and, 
at first sight, so startling, that many are now shrinking from it 
with alarm, under the impression that it destroys the argument 
from design, and almost amounts to the negation of a Supreme 
Intelligence. But there can, I think, be little doubt that such 
fears are, for the most part, unfounded. That matter is governed 
by mind, that the contrivances and elaborations of the universe 
are the product of intelligence, are propositions which are 
quite unshaken, whether we regard these contrivances as the 
results of a single momentary exercise of will, or of a slow, 


136 


DESIGN. 


consistent and regulated evolution. The proofs of a pervading 
and developing intelligence, and the proofs of a co-ordinating 
and combining intelligence, are both untouched, nor can any 
conceivable progress of science in this direction destroy them* 
LecJcy : History of Rationalism , Vol. 1, pp. 294-5. 

No Natural Process Known for Transforming Brutes Into Men. — 

Prof. Gray, of Harvard University, himself an evolutionist,, 
makes the following admissions concerning the failure of hi» 
theory to explain the origin of man. We take an extract from 
his first Yale lecture on the Religious Aspects of Science : 

“Analogy suggests man’s evolution. If the alternative be an 
immediate creation out of nothing, or out of earth, of the 
human form, there can be but little doubt which side the sci- 
entist would take. The question would be, Can these differ- 
ences be accounted for by known natural causes ? or shall we 
assume the unknown causes to be natural, or supernatural? 
You are aware that I know no natural process for the transfor- 
mation of a brute into a man. Yet I am equally unable to 
state how one species comes from another. I do not allow 
myself to believe that immediate creation would make man’s 
origin more divine. 

u When the naturalist is asked what and whence is the origin 
of man, he can only answer, we do not know at all. The traces 
in geology, which we have of man in former ages, show that he 
was then perfectly developed man. There is no vestige of an 
earlier form. The believer in the direct creation is entitled to 
this negative evidence. Those are mistaken who think that 
the Simian race can have defiled the stream along which man 
came. The stream must have branched too early for that.” — 
The Evangelist : Chicago, March 11, 1880. 

Darwin’s Confession. — Long before the reader has arrived at 
this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred 
to him. Some of them are so serious that to this day I can 
hardly reflect on them without being in some degree staggered; 
but to the best of my judgment the number are only apparent, 
and those that are real are greater, not, I think, fatal to the 
theory. — Darwin : Origin of Species, p. 133. 

The problem whether organization, on the whole, has ad- 
vanced, is in many ways excessively intricate. The geological 
record, at all times imperfect, does not extend far enough back 


DESIGN. 


137 


[scientists measure it by millions of years. — Ed.] to show with un- 
mistakeable clearness that within the known history of the 
world organization has largely advanced. — Darwin : Origin of 
Species, p. 308. 

Darwinism Turns Mosaism Out of Doors.— Darwin’s theory turns 
the Creator — and His occasional intervention in the revolutions 
of the earth, and in the production of species — without any 
hesitation out of doors, inasmuch as it does not leave the small- 
est room for the agency of such a Being. The first living germ 
being granted, out of it the creation develops itself progress- 
ively by natural selection, through all the geological periods 
of our planets, by the simple law of descent — no new species 
arises by creation, and none perishes by divine annihilation — 
the natural course of things, the process of evolution of all or- 
ganisms and of the earth itself, is of itself sufficient for the 
production of all we see. Thus, man is not a special creation, 
produced in a different way, and distinct from other animals, 
endowed with an individual soul and animated by the breath of 
God ; on the contrary, Man is only the highest product of the 
progressive evolution of animal life springing from the group 
of apes next below him. — Von Carl Vogt : Vol. 2 ,p. 260. 

Haeckel Says So, Too. — However highly the Creator maybe ex- 
alted, this view involves the ascription to Him of human attri- 
butes, in virtue of which He can form a plan, and construct or- 
ganisms to correspond with it. That is the view to which 
Darwin’s doctrine is directly opposed. — Haeckel : Natural His- 
tory of Creation, p. 17. 

Molecular Groupings Explain Nothing. — I do not think the 
materialist is entitled to say that his molecular groupings, and 
motions, explain everything. In realty they explain nothing. 
The utmost he can affirm is the association of two classes of 
phenomena, of whose real bond of union he is in absolute 
ignorance. The problem of the connection of body and soul is 
as insoluble, in its modern form, as it was in the pre-scientific 
ages. Phosphorus is known to enter into the composition ot 
the human brain, and a trenchant German writer has exclaimed, 
“Ohne Phosphor, Kein Gedanke !” That may or may not be 
the case, the knowledge would not lighten our darkness. On 
both sides of the zone here assigned to the materialist he is 
equally helpless. If you ask him whence is this “matter” of 


138 


DESIGN. 


which we have been discoursing — who or what divided it into 
molecules, who or what impressed upon them this necessity of 
running into organic forms — he has no answer. Science is 
mute in reply to these questions . — John Tyndall : Fragments of 
Science ; Lecture on Scientific Materialism. 

Lamentable Admissions by Tyndall. — If asked whether science 
has solved, or is likely in our day to solve, the problem of the 
universe, I must shake my head in doubt. Behind and above 
and around us the real mystery of the universe lies unsolved, 
and, as far as we are concerned, is ihcapable of solution. The 
problem of the connection of body and soul is as insoluble in 
its modern form as it was in the pre-scientific ages. There 
ought to be a clear distinction made between science in the 
state of hypothesis and science in the state of fact. And in- 
asmuch as it is still in its hypothetical stage, the ban of exclu- 
sion ought to fall upon the theory of evolution. After speak- 
ing of the theory of evolution applied to the primitive con- 
dition of matter as belonging to the dim twilight of conjecture, 
the certainty of experimental inquiry is here shut out. Those 
who hold the doctrine of evolution are by no means ignorant 
of the uncertainty of their data, and they only yield to it a 
provisional assent. In reply to your question, they will 
frankly admit their inability to point to any satisfactory experi- 
mental proof that life can be developed, save from demonstra- 
ble antecedent life. I share Virchow’s opinion that the theory 
of evolution in its complete form involves the assumption 
that, at some period or other of the earth’s history, there oc- 
curred what would be now called spontaneous generation. I 
agree with him that the proofs of it are still wanting. I hold 
with Virchow that the failures have been lamentable, that 
the doctrine is utterly discredited. — Tyndall: Fortnightly Re- 
view, January , 1880. 

The nebular hypothesis does not solve — it does not profess 
to solve — the ultimate mystery of this universe. It leaves, in 
fact, that mystery untouched. For, granting the nebula and its 
potential life, the question, whence they came, would still 
remain to baffle and bewilder us. At bottom, the hypothesis 
does nothing more than “transport the conception of life’s 
origin to an indefinitely distant past.”— Tyndall : Fragments of 
Science , page 455. 


DESIGN. 


139 


Modern Thought Must Decide Between the Theories.— Modern 
scientific thought is called upon to decide between this hypo- 
thesis and another: and public thought generally will after- 
wards be called upon to do the same. But, however the con- 
victions of individuals here and there may be influenced, the 
process must be slow and secular which commends the hypo- 
thesis of Natural Evolution to the public mind. For what are 
the core and essence of this hypothesis ? Strip it naked, and 
you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more 
ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the nobler 
forms of the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonder- 
ful mechanism of the human body, but that the human mind 
itself — emotion, intellect, will, and all their phenomena — were 
once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely, the mere statement of 
such a notion is more than a refutation ! But the hypothesis 
would probably go even farther than this. Many who hold it 
would probably assent to the position, that, at the present 
moment, all our philosophy, all our poetry, all our science, and 
all our art — Plato, Shakspeare, Newton and Baphael — are 
potential in the fires of the sun. We long to learn something 
of our origin. If the Evolution hypothesis be correct, even 
this unsatisfied yearning must have come to us across the ages 
which separate the unconscious primeval mist from the 
consciousness of to-day. I do not think that any holder of the 
Evolution hypothesis would say that I overstate or overstrain 
it in any way. I merely strip it of all vagueness, and bring 
before you, unclothed and unvarnished, the notions by which it 
must stand or fall . — Ibid : p. 453. 

Naturalists Chasing a Phantom.— It is my belief that naturalists 
are chasing a phantom, in their search after some material 
gradation among created beings, by which the whole animal 
kingdom may have been derived by successive development 
from a single germ, or from a few germs. It would seem, from 
the frequency with which this notion is revived — ever return- 
ing upon us with hydra-headed tenacity of life, and presenting 
itself under a new form as soon as the preceding one has been 
exploded and set aside— that it has a certain fascination for the 
human mind. This arises, perhaps, from the desire to explain 
the secret of our own existence ; to have some simple and easy 
solution of the fact that we live. 


140 


DESIGN. 


A Repulsive Poverty in Materialism.— I confess that there seems 
to me to be a repulsive poverty in this material explanation, 
that is contradicted by the intellectual grandeur of the universe ; 
the resources of the Deity cannot be so meagre that, in order 
to create a human being endowed with reason, He must change 
a monkey into a man. This is, however, merely a personal 
opinion, and has no weight as an argument ; nor am I so uncan- 
did as to assume that another may not hold an opinion diamet- 
rically opposed to mine in a spirit quite as reverential as my 
own. But I nevertheless insist that this theory is opposed to 
the processes of Nature, as far as we have been able to appre- 
hend them ; that it is contradicted by the facts of Embryology 
and Paleontology, the former showing us norms of develop- 
ment as distinct and persistent for each group as are fossil 
types of each period revealed to us by the latter ; and that the 
experiments upon domesticated animals and cultivated plants, 
on which its adherents base their views, are entirely foreign to 
the matter in hand, since the varieties thus brought about by 
the fostering care of man are of an entirely different character 
from those observed among wild species. And while their posi- 
tive evidence is inapplicable, their negative evidence is equally 
unsatisfactory, since, however long and frequent the breaks in 
the geological series may be in which they would fain bury their 
transition types, there are many points in the succession where 
the connection is perfectly distinct and unbroken, and it is just 
at these points that new organic groups are introduced without 
any intermediate forms to link them with the preceding ones. — 
Agassiz : Preface to Methods of Study in Natural History. 

Carlyle’s Opinion of Darwin.— “ So-called literary and scien- 
tific classes in England now proudly give themselves to proto- 
plasm, origin of species, and the like, to prove that God did not 
build the universe. I have known three generations of the 
Darwins, grandfather, father and son ; atheists all. The 
brother of the present famous naturalist, a quiet man, who 
lives not far from here, told me that among his grandfather’s 
effects he found a seal engraved with this legend : 1 Omnia ex 
conchis ;’ everything from a clamshell! 1 saw the naturalist 
not many months ago ; told him that I had read his 1 Origin of 
the Species,’ and other books ; that he had by no means satis- 
fied me that men were descended from monkeys, but had gone 


DESIGN. 


141 


far toward persuading me that he and his so-called scientific 
brethren had brought the present generation of Englishmen 
very near to monkeys. A good sort of man is this Darwin, 
and well meaning, but with very little intellect. Ah, it is a sad 
and terrible thing to see nigh a whole generation of men and 
women, professing to be cultivated, looking around in a pur- 
blind fashion, and finding no God in this universe. I suppose 
it is a reaction from the reign of cant and hollow pretense, 
professing to believe what in fact they do not believe. And 
this is what we have got. All things from frog spawn ; the 
gospel of dirt the order of the day. The older I grow — and I 
mow stand upon the brink of eternity — the more comes back to 
me the sentence in the catechism, which I learned when a 
child, and the fuller and deeper its meaning comes — 4 What is 
the great end of man!’ 4 To glorify God, and to enjoy him 
forever.’ No gospel of dirt, teaching that men have descended 
from frogs through monkeys, can ever set that aside.” — Car- 
lyle : Daily New York Tribune, November 4, 1876. Extract 
from a letter from Carlyle , published in Scotland and quoted in 
ihe London Times . 


SCIENCE and RELIGION. 


EDITORIAL Remark —There seem to be two opinions re- 
specting Science and Religion. One class declares them 
to be in conflict ; the other, in harmony. It is not our province 
to determine this question. Good religious men, and good sci- 
entific men, may be found on either side. Perhaps the key to 
the matter consists in a proper conception of both Science and 
Religion. Were either is false; this alone, would produce 
discord. But we give quotations representing all the phases of 
thought, and leave the reader to discriminate. — Ed. 

Controversy and Conflict Have a Purpose.— The din of a great 
controversy sounds in our ears. Men of thought have been 
summoned to choose their banner and range themselves upon 
one side or the other of the line of battle. It is the “ conflict ” 
between Religion and Science which has thrown the world into 
commotion. 

It might be expected that I should appear before you in a mili- 
tant character. I do not. I shall assume the office of a medi- 
ator. It may mark a stronger character to love war ; but when 
I see “ a house divided against itself,” I love peace. I shall be 
reproached for weakness. We shall hear of somebody “on the 
fence.” Extremists will say I have no opinion, and court the 
favor of both the combatants. I shall, nevertheless, be brave 
enough to face such dangers ; and I shall deliberately incur the 
risk of losing the favor of both combatants by refusing to take 
sides with either. To be positive, is not to be strong ; to be 
dogmatic, is not to be brave. To be right, is to be both strong 
and brave. I have a fancy there is some merit in keeping cool 
while others are excited. It is easier to go with the crowd than 
to resist it. It pampers our indolence to adopt opinions. But 
to form opinions is better. Wherever conflict is possible, 
neither side has all the right, nor all the virtue, nor all the truth. 
Perpetuated conflict implies imperishable life and vigor on both 
sides of the line of battle. Conflict, embittered, uncompromis- 
ing and cruel, implies excited passions and judicial blindness. 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


143 


Conflict arises through a law of existence as broad as society — 
as broad as nature. Progress is the issue of conflict, in every 
realm of being. Truth is a structure reared only on the battle- 
field of contending forces. Conflict is universal. Conflict is 
beneficent. But progress does not arise out of the extermina- 
tion of one of the conflicting elements, but out of an arbitration 
which negatives extravagant claims, brings to light forgotten 
truths, and settles the contending elements in a temporary 
equilibrium. The “ golden mean ” is formed of genuine metal. 
The judicial attitude is not the neutral or apathetic one. I 
fancy it is regal — honorable to the loftiest intellect — congenial 
to the purest conscience. 

The great “conflict ” of our day is between the claims of the 
religious nature and those of the intellect. On one side is con- 
sternation over the supposed encroachments of a hostile 
science ; on the other, exultation over a deliverance from fancied 
bondage to religious credulity. I shall attempt to show that 
this consternation is unreasoning and groundless, and this exul- 
tation short-sighted and delirious. 

Every student of the history of mental activity must have 
observed that a similar strife has been in existence ever since 
the dawn of reflective thought. Could we penetrate the pre- 
historic periods, I am confident it might be traced back to the 
very cradle of humanity. The religious instincts and the 
knowing faculties have always regarded each other with jeal- 
ous eyes. I cannot believe that this enduring conflict has no 
appointed place in the beneficent economy of a superintending 
intelligence. I am persuaded it has a profound significance ; 
and it must be that a discovery of it will promote the interests 
of peace, comity and truth. 

A careful scrutiny of the real forces concerned in this sec- 
ular controversy shows them to be the religious instincts and 
perceptions, on the one hand, and the cognitive powers on the 
other. Each has been resisting the supposed encroachments 
of the other; and, in resisting, has carried its pretensions 
beyond its own legitimate territory. — Winchell: Reconciliation 
of Science and Religion pp. 17-19. 

The Religious Nature. — The religious nature is a set of 
impulses and accompanying beliefs in the reality of their 
objects. It enacts its laws and enforces them inexorably. No 


144 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


man may think he can evade them. The intellectual powers 
take cognizance of the natural truth which furnishes the means 
and modes of gratification of the ethical powers. If the intel- 
lect be undeveloped, the religious mandates may drive man- 
kind to fetichism, to idolatry, to polytheism — to juggernaut or 
the funeral pyre. The religious nature must act . If intellect 
fail to open a rational avenue for its exercise, it rushes blindly 
into imbecilities, superstition, bigotry, dogmatism, persecution. 
But it has a right to act according to the best light which reason 
affords ; and when it acts thus, it acts rightly, it acts right- 
eously. Many a poor Buddhist will enjoy a higher seat in 
heaven, I believe, than the enlightened in our own ranks who are 
struggling to think their religious promptings a superstition. 

How Conflict Arises. — Hence arise the conflicts. The soul 
that has fixed its religious affections upon the sun or the moun- 
tain is loath to remove them when assured that neither sun nor 
mountain can possibly exert divine attributes. The intellect 
utters this disparaging declaration and the religious nature 
revolts at such profanity. Out upon that knowledge which 
would rob us of our gods ! Such unbridled daring must be 
restrained. The intellect beholds the religious nature paying 
its devotions to a senseless object and derides its credulity. 
And yet the religious faith remains subjectively legitimate and 
rational. It is only the objective exercise of it which assumes 
an absurd form. After a protest and a struggle, religious faith 
may settle upon another form which, for the time, commends 
itself to the most enlightened judgment of man; and from 
this, in the further progress of thought, it may also be driven. 
Thus, while intellect is ever progressive, faith, like love, is con- 
servative. Thus intellect is ever pointing in derision at the 
fogyism of faith ; and faith retaliates with scorn at the irrever- 
ence of intellect. It is the nature of religious faith to recog- 
nize sacredness. That with which divinity has been associ- 
ated in our minds is sacred; and faith can learn, only by a 
painful effort, to count it otherwise. Intellect cares only for 
the reality of things. It dethrones the idols of humanity the 
moment it discerns there is no divinity in them. It takes no 
comfort in deceiving itself ; it has no patience with deception 
But its scope is finite; its discernments are often obscure, 
and its judgments erroneous. It is well for man that hi? 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


145 


religious faith tends to immobility; it serves as a ballast to a 
ship with too much canvas. 

The Antagonism is Scli-regulative. — Thus the antagonism is 
self-regulative. When the sway of the intellect is in excess, 
the religious nature revolts ; when the religious nature runs 
riot, the intellect shames it back to sobriety and reason. Faith 
has always been prone to commit the error of clothing with 
sanctity things merely external and strictly secular. Its creeds 
have enumerated too many particulars. They have attempted 
to embody all the existing beliefs, and have thus subjected 
themselves to many an unnecessary shock, as the progress of 
intellect has disclosed their untenability. FTo reproaches are 
to be cast for such reasons. Such is the law of human progress. 
Intellectual and ethical rights are equipollent. Alternating 
secularism and superstition are but the vibrations of a psycho- 
logical balance caused by the accidents which transpire 
in human affairs. — Winchell: Reconciliation of Science and. 
Religion , pp. 211-12. 

Belief in Scripture Does not Shackle the Intellect.— It is the 
strange delusion of some, that belief in the Scriptures shackles 
the intellect ; and so pertinaciously do they insist upon this, 
that they even cause some, who hold the Scriptures to be a 
revelation, to feel as if the freest, mightiest, highest move- 
ments of the mind, were incompatible with faith. This delu- 
sion — so opposed to facts — springs in part from a mistake a» 
to the relative rank of believing and of reasoning. Some 
belief is a condition precedent to all reasoning. And as from 
belief reasoning proceeds, so in belief reasoning ends. It is 
the sphere of belief to which reasoning aspires, and there, in 
something higher than itself, its journeyings would end. 
Belief is the assent of the heart conjoining with the percep- 
tions of the mind — of the heart, which is more spiritual, more 
ultimate in its decisions than the intellect, and without whose 
assent the intellect finds no rest in its conclusions. The intel- 
lect is discursive, vagrant, fitted to chase the changing phe- 
nomena of a fleeting world, and only through the aid of the 
heart can it lay hold upon eternal, immutable truth. 

World Existed Because Christ Did. — There is a world of truth 
and being whose Creator is Christ. It exists because He 
existed. Over its gateway are inscribed conditions of belief 
J 


146 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


similar to those over the gateway of that world into which 
man is naturally born. This Christ-created world of truth and 
being throws its light athwart that world into which man is 
naturally born. It intensifies its light and its darkness. 
Everywhere it interposes its powers and its facts ; so that he, 
who knows nothing of this Christ-created world, is hopelessly 
confused and confounded in the attempt to comprehend what 
else had been in some measure comprehensible. ***** 
There can now be no right reasoning on the problems of life 
and being without right believing ; and hence it is, that the 
visions of so many philosophers are as wild, as bewildering, as 
worthless, as evanescent, as those of the Hasheesh, and their 
speculations sound like the dialectics of the underwitted, the 
sentimental reveries of mildly-struck lunatics, or the haughty 
ravings of exalted madmen. If reasoning within the high 
sphere of Christian thought be constrained, it is only because 
of the want of perfect belief. He who does not believe, can- 
not reason. He who half unconsciously mistrusts, fears to 
reason. He who unconsciously but half believes, reasons 
where he should not reason. If faith be entire, then thought 
is free, and thought is not given to problems where thought 
avails not. Without faith, there can be no wisdom . — The 
Church and Science : pp. 434-6. 

Catholicism and the Spirit of the Age Antagonize.— An im- 
passable and hourly- widening gulf intervenes between Catho- 
licism and the spirit of the age. Catholicism insists 
that blind faith is superior to reason ; that mysteries 
are of more importance than facts. She claims to be 
the sole interpreter of Nature and Revelation, the supreme 
arbiter of knowledge; she summarily rejects all modern 
criticism of the Scriptures, and orders the Bible to be accepted 
in accordance with the views of the theologians of Trent; 
she openly avows her hatred of free institutions and constitu- 
tional systems, and declares that those are in damnable error 
who regard the reconciliation of the pope with modern civil- 
ization as either possible or desirable. 

But the spirit of the age demands— is the human intel- 
lect to be subordinated to the Tridentine Fathers, or to 
the fancy of illiterate and uncritical persons who wrote in the 
earlier ages of the Church ? It sees no merit in blind faith, 


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147 


but rather distrusts it. It looks forward to an improvement in 
the popular canon of credibility for a decision between fact 
and fable. It does not consider itself bound to believe fables 
and falsehoods that have been invented for ecclesiastical ends. 
*********** * 

Then, has it in truth come to this, that Eoman Christianity 
and Science are recognized by their respective adherents as 
being absolutely incompatible ; they cannot exist together ; one 
must yield to the other; mankind must have its choice — it 
cannot have both. 

While such is, perhaps, the issue as regards Catholicism, a 
reconciliation of the Reformation with Science is not only 
possible, but would easily take place, if the Protestant churches 
would only live up to the maxim taught by Luther, and estab- 
lished by so many years of war. That maxim is, the right of 
private interpretation of the Scriptures. It was the founda- 
tion of intellectual liberty. But, if a personal interpretation 
of the book of Revelation is permissible, how can it be denied 
in the case of the book of Nature? In the misunderstandings 
that have taken place, we must ever bear in mind the infirmities 
of men. The generations that immediately followed the Refor- 
mation may perhaps be excused for not comprehending the full 
significance of their cardinal principle, and for not on all occa- 
sions carrying it into effect. — Dr. Draper: Conflict Between 
Science and Religion , pp. 362-3. 

Dogmatism and Rationalism Contrasted. — Dogmatism and Ration- 
alism are the two extremes between which religious philosophy 
perpetually oscillates. Each represents a system from which, 
when nakedly and openly announced, the well-regulated mind 
almost instinctively shrinks back ; yet which, in some more or 
less specious disguise, will be found to underlie the antagonist 
positions of many a theological controversy. Many a man 
who rejects isolated portions of Christian doctrine, on the 
ground that they are repugnant to his reason, would hesitate to 
avow broadly and unconditionally that reason is the supreme ar- 
biter of all religious truth ; though, at the same time, he would find 
it hard to point out any particular in which the position of reason, 
in relation to the truths which he still retains, differs from that 
which it occupies in relation to those which he rejects. And, 
on the other hand, there are many who, while they would by no 
means construct a dogmatic system on the assumption that the 


148 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


conclusions of reason may always be made to coincide with 
those of revelation, yet, for want of an accurate distinction 
between that which is within the province of human thought 
and that which is beyond it, are accustomed in practice to 
demand the assent of the reason to positions which it is equally 
incompetent to affirm or to deny. Thus, they not only lessen 
the value of the service which it is capable of rendering within 
its legitimate sphere, but also indirectly countenance that very 
intrusion of the human intellect into sacred things, which, 
in some of its other aspects, they so strongly and so justly 
condemn. 

Disciples of Rationalism Not Always Disciples of Reason.— The 

disciples of the Rationalist are not necessarily the disciples 
of reason. It is quite as possible to receive with un- 
questioning submission a system of religion or philosophy in- 
vented by a human teacher, as it is to believe, upon the 
authority of Revelation, doctrines which no human reason is 
competent to discover. The so-called freethinker is as often as 
any other man the slave of some self-chosen master ; and many 
who scorn the imputation of believing anything merely because 
it is found in the Bible, would find it hard to give any better 
reason for their own unbelief than the ipse dixit of some infidel 
philosopher. But when -we turn from the disciples to the 
teachers, and look to the origin of Dogmatism and Rationalism 
as systems, we find both alike to be the products of thought, 
operating in different ways upon the same materials. Faith, 
properly so-called, is not constructive, but receptive. It can- 
not supply the missing portions of an incomplete system, 
though it may bid us remain content with the deficiency. It 
cannot of itself give harmony to the discordant voices of 
religious thought ; it cannot reduce to a single focus the many- 
colored rays into which the light of God’s presence is refracted 
in its passage through the human soul ; though it may bid us 
look forward to a time when the eyes of the blind shall be 
opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped : when that 
apparent discord shall be known but as the echo of a half-heard 
concert, and those diverging rays shall be blended once more 
in the pure white light of heaven.— Mansel : Limits of Religious 
Thought , pp. 45-50. 

What Science and Religion Teach.— It has been said that 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


149 


science teaches the method of nature and not its laws : relig- 
ion its cause and not its method, and there is much truth in the 
distinction ; but it does not contain the whole truth, or else it 
would be comparatively easy to draw lines between the 
domains of science and religion, which reasonable men would 
not desire to overpass ; but it is quite true that the infirmity 
of nature is liable to create a strong prejudice in the minds of 
scientific men against divine intervention, as they term it, and, 
on the other hand, theology may attribute to God capricious 
modes of action not in harmony either with science or with 
revelation. Eevelation stands where it always was, while 
science is continually moving, and if we attempt to compare 
them with each other, our comparison must be with revelation 
as in itself fixed, and with science as it is at the point of pro- 
gress which it may happen to have reached at the time of which 
we are speaking or writing. It is very much like a traveller 
viewing the great Palisades of your Hudson. If he stands 
-continually in one place and looks at them, they always seem 
the same ; but if his position is changed, new grandeurs rise 
before him, and though stable they appear in varying forms. Thus 
it is with science and religion. The student, standing upon one 
point of view, sees the Bible always the same. He who is 
drifting with the current of science, may see it in other aspects. 
— Dr. J. W. Dawson : Lectures on the Bible and Science , Tri- 
bune-Extra, No. 26, p. 2. 

Bible’s Adaptation to Nature. — A further point of the relation 
of the Bible to science is adaptation in nature. The idea of an 
all-wise Creator involves this, and here again it is necessary 
that the Bible, as the agent of God, shall maintain use and 
adaptation in nature. This, in modern times, science has so 
keenly perceived that it has pushed it into the most popular 
hypothesis of the day, with strange inconsistency, however, 
denying the evidence of design. But if we look again at the 
Scripture in this matter we shall find that it occupies here 
also a somewhat broader standpoint. The teleology of the 
Bible is distinct. Let us analyze it for a very few moments, 
and compare it with the teachings of natural science. It 
resolves the designs of God into three parts. First : the higher 
aim in creation, according to the Scripture, is the pleasure of the 
Creator himself. God saw the things He made, and that they 
were good. They were created for His pleasure. This is the 


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SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


highest end. When Darwin, perhaps not wisely, asserts that 
the production of any structure for the purpose of beauty 
alone, would, if proved, be fatal to his theory, he unwillingly 
takes up a position, which, in the eye of the Bible, would be 
absolutely atheistic as denying the chief end of God in His 
works. And yet Darwin, in his later works, has been obliged 
to recede so far from this that he may be said to have given it 
up. The instinct of beauty is too strong in man to allow most 
scientific students to go so far. — Ibid, p. 5. 

Buckle’s Error. — There is a strong and resolute enthusiasm 
in which science finds an ally; and it is to the lowering of this 
fire, rather than to the diminution of intellectual insight, that 
the lessening productiveness of men of science, in their mature 
years, is to be ascribed. Mr. Buckle sought to detach intel- 
lectual achievement from moral force. He gravely erred; for 
without moral force to whip it into action, the achievement of 
the intellect, would be poor, indeed. — Tyndall : Fragments of 
Science, p. 531. 

Matter and Spirit Unitize in all True Studies.— All is life for him 
who is alive ; all is death for him who is dead. All is spirit for 
him who is spirit; all is matter for him who is nothing but 
matter. It is with the whole life and the whole intellect that 
we should study the work of Him who is life and intellect itself. 

This work of the Supreme Intelligence — can it be otherwise 
than intelligent? The work of Him who is all life and all 
love — must it not be living and full of love ? 

How, should we not find in our earth itself the realization of 
an intelligent thought, of a thought of love to man, who is the 
end and aim of all creation, and the bright consummate flower 
of this admirable organization ? 

Yes ! Certainly it is so. Faith so teaches, inspiring us with 
this sentiment, vague still, yet profound. Science so teaches 
by a patient and long-continued study, reserving this sublime 
view as the sweetest reward for our labor. Faith, enlightened 
and expounded by science — the union of faith and science — is 
living, harmonious knowledge, is perfected faith, for it has 
become vision. — Guyot: Farth and Man, p . 333. 

A Worthy Work. — It is no profane work that is engaged in 
by those who, in all humility, would endeavor to remove 
jealousies between parties whom God has joined together, and 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


151 


whom man is not at liberty to put asunder. We are not lower- 
ing the dignity of science when we command it to do what all 
the objects which it looks at and admires do, when we command 
it to worship God. Nor are we detracting from the honor 
which is due to religion, when we press it to take science into 
its service, and accept the homage which it is able to pay. We 
are seeking to exalt both, when we show how nature conducts 
man to the threshold of religion, and when from this command- 
ing position we bid him look abroad on the wide territories of 
nature. We would aid at the same time both religion and 
science, by removing those prejudices against sacred truth 
which nature has been employed to foster; and we would 
accomplish this, not by casting aside and discarding nature, but 
by rightly interpreting it. 

A Beautiful Utterance. — Let not science and religion be reckoned 
as opposing citadels, frowning defiance upon each other, and 
their troops brandishing their armor in hostile attitude. They 
have too many common foes, if they would but think of it, in 
ignorance and prejudice, in passion and vice, under all their 
forms, to admit of their lawfully wasting their strength in 
a useless warfare with each other. Science has a founda- 
tion, and so has religion ; let them unite their foun- 
dations, and the basis will be broader and they will 
be two compartments of one great fabric reared to the 
glory of God. Let the one be the outer and the other the 
inner court. In the one, let all look, and admire, and adore ; 
and in the other, let those who have faith kneel, and pray, and 
praise. Let the one be the sanctuary where human learning 
may present its richest incense as an offering to God; and, the 
other, the holiest of all, separated from it by a veil now rent in 
twain, and in which, on a blood-sprinkled mercy-seat, we pour 
out the love of a reconciled heart, and hear the oracles of the 
living God. — McCosh: Method of Divine Government, p. 451. 

A Differentiation. — Otherwise contemplating the facts, we 
may say that Eeligion and Science have been undergoing a slow 
differentiation; and that their ceaseless conflicts have been 
due to the imperfect separation of their spheres and functions. 
Eeligion has, from the first, struggled to unite more or less 
science with its nescience ; Science has, from the first, kept 
hold of more or less nescience, as though it were a part of 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


Ii52 

science. Each lias been obliged gradually to relinquish that 
territory which it wrongly claimed, while it has gained from 
the other that to which it had a right ; and the antagonism 
between them has been an inevitable accompaniment of this 
process. A more specific statement will make this clear. 

Religion Trespassing on Science. — Religion, though at the out- 
set it asserted a mystery, also made numerous definite asser- 
tions respecting this mystery — professed to know its nature in 
the minutest detail; and in so far as it is claimed positive 
knowledge, it trespassed upon the province of Science. From 
the times of early mythologies, when such intimate acquaint- 
ance with the mystery was alleged, down to our own dajs, 
when but a few abstract and vague propositions are maintained, 
Religion has been compelled by Science to give up one after 
another of its dogmas — of those assumed cognitions which it 
could not substantiate. In the meantime, Science substituted 
for the personalities to which Religion ascribed phenomena, 
certain metaphysical entities ; and in doing this it trespassed 
on the province of Religion : since it classed among the things 
which it comprehended, certain forms of the incomprehensible. 
Partly by the criticisms of Religion, which has occasionally 
called in question its assumptions, and partly as a consequence 
of spontaneous growth, Science has been obliged to abandon 
these attempts to include within the boundaries of knowledge 
that which cannot be known ; and has so yielded up to Relig- 
ion that which of right belonged to it. 

[If this is so, why did Professor Tyndall cross the line of the know- 
able in the Belfast address, and why this constant yearning and prying 
into the unknown ? — Ed.~\ 

So long as this process of differentation is incomplete, more 
or less of antagonism must continue. Gradually as the limits 
of possible cognition are established, the causes of conflict 
will diminish. And a permanent peace will be reached when 
Science becomes fully convinced that its explanations are prox- 
imate and relative: while Religion becomes fully convinced 
that the mystery it contemplates is ultimate and absolute. 

Religion and Science are Correlatives.— Religion and Science are, 
therefore, necessary correlatives. As already hinted, they stand 
respectively for those two antithetical modes of consciousness 
which cannot exist asunder. A known cannot be thought of 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


153 


.apart from an unknown ; nor can an unknown be thought of 
apart from a known. And, by consequence, neither can become 
more distinct without giving greater distinctness to the other. 
To carry further a metaphor, before used — they are the positive 
and negative poles of thought ; of which neither can gain in 
intensity without increasing the intensity of the other. 

Consciousness of an Inscrutable Power Growing Clearer.— Thus 

the consciousness of an Inscrutable Power, manifested to us 
through all phenomena, has been growing ever clearer ; and 
must eventually be freed from its imperfections. The certainty 
that on the one hand such a power exists, while on the other 
hand its nature transcends intuition and is beyond imagination 
I [these last eight words tell the story. — Ed.], is the certainty towards 
which intelligence has, from the first, been progressing. To 
this conclusion Science inevitably arrives as it reaches its 
•confines, while to this conclusion Religion is irresistibly driven 
by critcism. And satisfying as it does the demands of the most 
rigorous logic at the same time that it gives the religious senti- 
ment the widest possible sphere of action, it is the conclusion 
we are bound to accept without reserve or qualification. 

[What good, if imagination itself cannot serve us? — Ed .] 

Some do, indeed, allege that though the Ultimate Cause of 
things cannot really be thought of by us as having specified 
attributes, it is yet incumbent upon us to assert these attri- 
butes. Though the forms of our consciousness are such that 
the Absolute cannot in any manner or degree be brought within 
them, we are, nevertheless, told that we must represent the 
Absolute to ourselves under these forms. As writes Mr. Man- 
sel, in the work which I have already quoted largely: “It is 
our duty, then, to think of God as personal ; and it is our duty 
to believe that He is infinite.’’ 

Must Neither Affirm nor Deny Personality.— That this is not the 
conclusion here adopted, needs hardly be said. If there be any 
meaning in the foregoing arguments, duty requires us neither 
to affirm nor deny personality. Our duty is to submit ourselves 
with all humility to the established limits of our intelligence, 
and not perversely to rebel against them. Let those who can, 
believe that there is eternal war set between our intellectual 
faculties and our moral obligations. I, for one, admit no such 


154 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


radical vice in tlie constitution of things . — Herbert Spencer : 
First Principles, pp. 107-8. 

[We give this magnificent, but, as we think, erroneous, passage, from 
Spencer, unbroken, that our readers may see where modern thought is 
tending. We must say, though, there are valuable concessions in it. — 

e a.] 

How Belief Has Been Affected. — The influence physical sciences 
have exercised over speculative opinions has not been of the 
nature of a direct logical proof displacing an old belief, but 
rather the attracting influence of a new analogy. As I have 
already had occasion to observe, an impartial examination of 
great transitions of opinions will show that they have been 
effected, not by the force of direct arguments, not by such 
reasons as those which are alleged by controversialists, and 
recorded in creeds, but by a sense of the incongruity or discord- 
ance of the old doctrines with other parts of our knowledge. 
Each man assimilates the different orders of his ideas. There 
must always be a certain keeping or congruity or analogy 
between them. The general measure of probability determines 
belief, and it is derived from many departments of knowledge. 
Hence it is that whenever the progress of inquiry introduces a 
new series of conceptions into physical science, which repre- 
sents one aspect of the relations of the Deity to man, these 
conceptions, or at least something like them, are speedily 
transferred to theology, which represents another. 

It must, however, be acknowledged, that there are some 
influences resulting from physical science which are deeply to 
be deplored, for they spring neither from logical arguments nor 
from legitimate analogies, but from misconceptions that are pro- 
foundly imbedded in our belief, or from fallacies into which our 
minds are too easily betrayed. The increased evidence of 
natural religion furnished by the innumerable marks of crea- 
tive or co-ordinating wisdom which science reveals, can hardly 
be over-estimated, nor can it be reasonably questioned that a 
world, governed in all its parts by the interaction of fixed 
natural laws, implies a higher degree of designing skill than a 
chaos of fortuitous influences irradiated from time to time by 
isolated acts of spiritual intervention. Yet still, so generally 
is the idea of Divine action restricted to that of miracle, that 
every discovery assigning strange phenomena .their place in 
the symmetry of nature has, to many minds, an irreligious 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


155 


appearance: which is still further strengthened by the fact 
that while physical science acquiesces in the study of laws as 
the limit of its research, even scientific men sometimes forget 
that the discovery of law is not an adequate solution of the 
problem of causes. When all the motions of the heavenly 
bodies have been reduced to the dominion of gravitation, gravi- 
tation itself still remains an insoluble problem. Why it is that 
matter attracts matter, we do not know — we perhaps never 
shall know. Science can throw much light upon the laws that 
preside over the development of life; but what life is, and 
what is its ultimate cause, we are utterly unable to say. The 
mind of man, which can track the course of the comet and 
measure the velocity of light, has hitherto proved incapable of 
explaining the existence of the minutest insect or the growth 
of the most humble plant. In grouping phenomena, in ascer- 
taining their sequences, and their analogies, its achievements 
have been marvellous ; in discovering ultimate causes it has 
absolutely failed. An impenetrable mystery lies at the root of 
every existing thing. The first principle, the dynamic force, 
the vivifying power, the efficient causes of those successions 
which we term natural laws, elude the utmost efforts of our 
research. The scalpel of the anatomist and the analysis of 
the chemist are here at fault. The microscope, which reveals 
the traces of all-pervading, all-ordaining intelligence in the 
minutest globule, and displays a world of organized and living 
beings in a grain of dust, supplies no solution of the problem. 
We know nothing, or next to nothing, of the relations of mind 
to matter, either in our own persons or in the world that is 
around us; and to suppose that the progress of natural sci- 
ence eliminates the conception of a first cause from creation, 
by supplying natural explanations, is completely to ignore the 
sphere and limits to which it is confined. * * * * 

What Science Has to Contend Against in Every Age.— Nearly 
every science when it has first arisen has had to contend 
with two great obstacles— with the unreasoning incre- 
dulity of those who regard novelty as necessarily a 
synonym for falsehood, and with the unrestrained enthusiasm 
of those who, perceiving vaguely and dimly a new series of 
yet undefined discoveries opening upon mankind, imagine that 
they will prove a universal solvent. It is said that when, after 
long years of obstinate disbelief, the reality of the great dis- 


156 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


covery of Harvey dawned upon the medical world, the first 
result was a school of medicine which regarded man simply as 
an hydraulic machine, and found the principle of every malady 
in imperfections of circulation. The same history has 
been continually reproduced. That love of symmetry 
which makes men impatient to reduce all phenomena to a 
single cause, has been the parent of some of the noblest 
discoveries ; but it has also, by the imperfect classifications it 
has produced, been one of the most prolific sources of human 
error. In the present day, when the study of the laws of 
matter has assumed an extraordinary development, and when 
the relations between the body and mind are chiefly investigated 
with a primary view to the functions of the latter, it is neither 
surprising nor alarming that a strong movement towards 
materialism should be the consequence . — Lecky : History of 
Rationalism , pp. 296-9. 

Rightly Understood, all Scientific Truths Harmonize with Religion. 

Rightly understood, and fairly interpreted, there is not a single 
scientific truth that does not harmoniously accord with revealed 
as well as natural religion ; and yet, by superficial minds, almost 
every one of these principles has, at one time or another, been 
regarded as in collision with religion, and especially with reve- 
lation. One after another have these apparent discrepancies 
melted away before the clearer light of further examination. 
And yet, up to the present day, not a few, closing their eyes 
against the lessons of experience, still fancy that the responses 
of science are not in unison with those from revelation. But 
this is a sentiment which finds no place with the profound and 
unprejudiced philosopher ; for he has seen too much of the 
harmony between the works and the word of God to doubt the 
identity of their origin. He knows it to be a sad perversion of 
scientific truth to use it for the discredit of religion. He knows 
that the inspiration of the Almighty breathed the same spirit 
into science as into religion ; and if they utter discordant tones, 
it must be because one or the other has been forced to speak 
in an unnatural dialect. — Hitchcock : Religion of Geology, p. 499. 

Does Natural Science Dispose to Infidelity !-We have heard that 
the study of natural science disposes to infidelity. But we feel 
persuaded that this is a danger associated only with a slight 
and partial, never with a deep, and adequate, and comprehen- 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


157 


sive view of its principles. It is very possible that the con- 
junction between science and skepticism may at present be 
more frequently realized than in former days ; but this is only 
because, in spite of all that is alleged about this our more 
enlightened day and more enlightened public, our science is 
neither so deeply founded, nor of such firm and thorough 
staple, as it was wont to be. We have lost in depth what we 
have gained in diffusion ; having neither the massive erudition, 
nor the gigantic scholarship, nor the profound and well-laid 
philosophy of a period that has now gone by ; and it is to this 
that infidelity stands indebted for her triumphs among the 
scoffers and superficialists of a half-learned generation. — Dr. 
Chalmers : Vol. 7, p. 262. 

Natural Philosophy Not Opposed to Religion.— Nothing can be 
more unfounded than the objection that has been taken, in limine ,. 
by persons, well meaning, perhaps, certainly of narrow minds, 
against the study of natural philosophy, and, indeed, against all 
science, that it fosters in its cultivators an undue and overween- 
ing self-conceit, leads them to doubt the immortality of the soul, 
and to scoff at revealed religion. Its natural effect, we may con- 
fidently assert, on every well-constituted mind, is, and must be, 
the direct contrary. No doubt the testimony of natural reason, 
on whatever exercised, must, of course, stop short of those 
truths which it is the object of revelation to make known; but 
while it places the existence and principal attributes of a Deity 
on such grounds as to render doubt absurd, and atheism 
ridiculous, it unquestionably opposes no natural or necessary 
obstacle to further progress : on the contrary, by cherishing as 
a vital principle an unbounded spirit of inquiry and ardency of 
expectation, it unfetters the mind from prejudicies of every 
kind, and leaves it open to every impression of a higher nature, 
which it is susceptible of receiving: guarding only against 
enthusiasm and self-deception by a habit of strict investigation, 
but encouraging, rather than suppressing, everything that can 
offer a prospect or a hope beyond the present obscure and un- 
satisfactory state. The character of the true philosopher is to 
hope all things not impossible, and to believe all things not un- 
reasonable . — Sir John Herscliel : Discourse on Study of Natural 
Philosophy. 

How Men Become Bigoted. — A study of the natural world teaches. 


158 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


not the truths of revealed religion, nor do the truths of 
religion inform us of the inductions of physical science. Hence 
it is that men, whose studies are too much confined to one 
branch of knowledge, often learn to overrate themselves, and so 
become narrow-minded. Bigotry is a besetting sin of our 
nature. Too often has it been the attendant of religious zeal ; 
but it is perhaps the most bitter and unsparing when found 
among the irreligious. A philosopher, not understanding one 
atom of their spirit, will sometimes scoff at the labors of 
religious men ; and one who calls himself religious will, perhaps, 
return a like harsh judgment, and thank God that he is not as 
the philosopher : forgetting, all the while, that man can ascend 
to no knowledge except by facilities given to him by his 
Creator’s hand, and that all natural knowledge is but a re- 
flection of the will of God. In harsh judgments, such as 
these, there is not only much folly, but much sin. True 
wisdom consists in seeing how all the faculties of the mind, and 
all parts of knowledge, bear upon each other, so as to work 
together for a common end : ministering at once to the happi- 
ness of man and his Maker’s glory. — Pro/. Sedgicick : Discourse 
on the Studies of the University , p. 105. 

Knowledge Properly Pursued. — To be content in utter darkness 
and ignorance is, indeed, unmanly, and therefore we think that 
to love light and seek knowledge must always be right. 
Yet, wherever pride has any share in the work, even knowledge 
and light may be ill-pursued. Knowledge is good, and 
light is good, yet man perished in seeking knowledge, and 
moths perished in seeking light ; and if we, who are crushed 
before the moth, will not accept such mystery as is needful for 
us, we shall perish in like manner. But, accepted in humble- 
ness, it instantly becomes an element of pleasure ; and I think 
that every rightly constituted mind ought to rejoice, not so 
much in knowing anything clearly, as in feeling that there is 
infinitely more which it cannot know. Hone but proud or 
weak men would mourn over this, for we may always know 
more if we choose by working on ; but the pleasure is, I think, 
to humble people, in knowing that, the journey is endless, the 
treasure inexhaustible, watching the cloud still march before 
them with its summitless pillar, and being sure that, to 
the end of time and to the length of eternity, the mys- 
teries of its infinity will still open farther and farther, their 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


159 


dimness being the sign and necessary adjunct of their inex- 
haustibleness. I know there are an evil mystery and a death- 
ful dimness— the mystery of the great Babylon — the dimness 
of the scaled eye and soul ; but do not let us confuse these 
with the glorious mystery of the things which the angels 
u desire to look into,” or with the dimness which, even before 
the clear eye and open soul, still rests on sealed pages of the 
eternal volume. — Buskin : True and Beautiful, p. 427. 

La Place Finds Neither Beginning nor End to Creation.— And as 

La Place could find in the solar system no indications of an 
end, so was he unable, he said, to find in it any trace of a 
beginning. He failed in discovering in all astronomy the fact 
of authorship, just as Turrettine had failed in finding in all 
Scripture the fact of astronomic construction. And here lies, 
I am inclined to think, the true line between revelation and 
science — a line drawn of old with a God-derived precision, 
which can be rightly appreciated neither by mere theologians 
like Turrettine, nor by mere men of science like La Place, but 
which is, notwithstanding, fraught with an evidence direct in 
its bearing on the truth of Scripture. That great fact, moral 
in its influence, of the authorship of the heavens and earth, 
which the science of La Place failed of itself to discover, and 
which was equally unknown to the ancient philosophers, God 
has revealed. It is “through faith we understand that the 
worlds were formed by the word of God, so that things which 
are seen were not made of things which do appear.” And, on 
the other hand, the great truths, physical in their bearing, to 
the discovery of which science is fully competent, God did 
not reveal, but left them to be developed piecemeal by the 
unassisted human faculties. And that ability of nicely draw- 
ing the line between the two classes of truths in a very remote 
age of the world, which we find manifested in the oldest of 
the Scriptural books, I must regard as an ability which could 
have been derived only through inspiration, and from God 
alone . — Hugh Miller : Testimony of Bocks, p. 381. 

The Danger of Seeing Things hut Partially.— From the first mo- 
ment or birth-time of modern science, if we could fix the 
moment, it has been clear that Christianity must ultimately come 
into a grand issue of life and death with it, or with the tenden- 
cies embodied in its progress. Not that Christianity has any 


160 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


conflict with the facts of science, or they with it. On the con- 
trary, since both it and nature have their common root and har- 
mony in God, Christianity is the natural foster-mother of science, 
and science the certain handmaid of Christianity. And both 
together, when rightly conceived, must constitute one complete 
system of knowledge. But the difficulty is here: that we see 
things only in a partial manner, and that the two great modes of 
thought, or intellectual methods, that of Christianity in the 
supernatural department of God’s plan, and that of science in 
the natural, are so different that a collision is inevitable and a 
struggle necessary to the final liquidation of the account 
between them ; or, what is the same, necessary to a proper 
settlement of the conditions of harmony. 

Stickling for the Letter. — Thus, from the time of Galileo’s and 
Newton’s discoveries, down to the present moment of dis- 
covery and research in geological science, we have seen the 
Christian teachers stickling for the letter of Christian docu- 
ments and alarmed for their safety, and fighting inch by inch ? 
and with solemn pertinacity, the plainest, most indisputable or 
even demonstrable facts. On the other side, the side of science 
multitudes, especially of the mere dilettanti, have been boasting’ 
almost every month, some new discovery that was to make a 
fatal breach upon revealed religion. 

And a much greater danger to religion is to be apprehended 
from science than this, viz : the danger that comes from what 
may be called a bondage under the method of science — as 
if nothing could be true, save as it is proved by the scientific 
method. Whereas, the method of all the higher truths of 
religion is different, being the method of faith; a verifica- 
tion by the heart, and not by the notions of the head. 

The Mind Glued Down to Nature.— Busied in nature, and pro- 
foundly engrossed with her phenomena, confident of the unifor- 
mity of her laws, charmed with the opening wonders revealed 
in her processes, armed with manifold powers contributed to 
the advancement of commerce and the arts by the discovery 
of her secrets, and pressing onward still in the inquest, with 
an eagerness stimulated by rivalry and the expectation of 
greater wonders yet to be revealed — occupied in this manner, 
not only does the mind of scientific men, but of the age itself, 
become fastened to, and glued down upon, nature ; conceiving 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


161 


that nature as a frame of physical order is itself the system of 
God ; unable to imagine anything higher and more general to 
which it is subordinate. Imprisoned, in this manner, by the 
terms and the method of nature, the tendency is to find the 
whole system of God included under its laws ; and then it is 
only a part of the same assumption that we are incredulous in 
regard to any modification, or seeming interruption of their 
activity, from causes included in the supernatural agency of 
persons, or in those agencies of God himself that complete 
the unity and true system of His reign. And so it comes to 
pass that while the physical order called nature is perhaps 
only a single and very subordinate term of that universal 
divine system, a mere pebble chafing the ocean-bed of its 
eternity, we refuse to believe that this pebble can be acted on 
at all from without, requiring all events and changes in it to 
take place under the laws of acting it has inwardly in itself. 

The Consequences. — There is no incarnation, therefore ; no 
miracle, no redemptive grace, or experience : for God’s system 
is nature, and it is incredible that the laws of nature should be 
interrupted ; all which is certainly true, if there be no higher, 
more inclusive system under which it may take place systemati- 
cally, as a result even of system itself. 

And exactly this must be the understanding of mankind, at 
some future time, when the account between Christianity and 
nature shall have been fully liquidated. When that point is 
reached it will be seen that the real system of God includes 
two parts, a natural and a supernatural, and it will be no more 
incredible that one should act upon the other than that one 
planet or particle in the department of nature should act upon 
and modify the action of another. — Bushnell : Nature and Super- 
natural, p. 19. 

A Flagrant Contempt for Biblical Criticism.— On the very 
threshold of the great subject before us we are confronted by 
two commanding but opposite points of view, between which it 
is necessary to choose. As the supernatural is admitted or re- 
jected, the whole life of Jesus is transformed from its com- 
mencement to its close. In the former case, testimony and 
texts retain their evidential value ; in the latter, they are before- 
hand branded with suspicion, and what is left is not fact to be 
verified, but fable to be interpreted. It is impossible, there- 

K 


162 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


fore, to bend too careful a study to a problem so vast and 
fertile in results : it is the very foundation-stone of the whole 
building which has to be laid. Now, we are at once struck with 
one patent fact which greatly complicates the point at issue 
between the opposing partisans, or rather, which prevents their 
entering closely and seriously into controversy at all. This is 
the haughty and contemptuous refusal of the naturalistic school 
to put to a critical test the opinion of its opponents : its claim 
to lay down at the outset, as an indisputable axiom, the negation 
of the supernatural. This contempt for faith is in its essence 
also a contempt for science, a limit imposed on free inquiry, and 
the first step in the path of prejudice, which is but a blind 
adherence to a preconceived and untested opinion. It is a 
flagrant deviation from those great experimental methods 
which for three centuries have been so constantly increasing 
the sum of human knowledge. Bacon was right when he 
pointed out as a source of error “the exaggerated and almost 
idolatrous respect for human intellect : a respect which turns 
men away from the contemplation of nature and of experience, 
and makes them revolve, as it were, in the circle of their own 
meditations and reflections.” If the same peremptory method 
had been applied to the natural sciences, by which the super- 
natural is now put out of court without form of trial, we should 
find ourselves to-day maintaining the theory of vortices with 
Descartes against Newton, and treating the circulation of the 
blood as a fable. Free enquiry has no worse foe than trenchant 
dogmatism, which eludes the test of proof equally in what 
it affirms and denies. 

The Supernatural Sneered Down. — Are we doing injustice to our 
adversaries ? Let their own words be the judges : “ The 
countries and classes by which the supernatural is received, are 
of secondary importance.” (M. Eenan, “ Chair of Hebrew in the 
College of France.”) “ If we do not enter upon this discussion, 
it is from the impossibility of doing so without admitting an in- 
admissible proposition, namely, the mere possibility of the 
supernatural. Our principle is to hold ourselves constantly 
aloof from the supernatural, that is, from the imagination. The 
leading principle of all true history, as of all true science, is, 
that that which is not in nature is nothing, and can be counted 
as nothing, unless as an idea.” (M. Havet, Revue des Deux 
Mondes, August 1st, 1863.) “ Positive philosophy sets aside the 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


163 


systems of theology which suppose supernatural action.” (M. 
Littre, “ Conservation , Revolution and Positivism/’ p. 26.) 

We ask, whether it is possible to elude examination and 
escape debate in a more pointed manner than by such words as 
these ? A judgment without law is the only possible result of 
such polemics. This revolutionary procedure is even more 
convenient than it is summary; that which is treated thus is no 
legend, born of yesterday, but a mode of thought which has had 
the greatest spirits for its defenders, and which has ever moved 
mankind with an incomparable sway. — Pressense : Life of 
Christ, p. 1. 

A Reign of Law Everywhere. — The reign of law — is this, then, 
the reign under which we live ? Yes, in a sense, it is. There 
is no denying it. The whole world around us, and the whole 
world within us, are ruled by Law. Our very spirits are sub- 
ject to it — those spirits which seem so spiritual, so subtle, so 
free. How often, in the darkness, do they feel the restraining 
walls — bounds within which they move — conditions out of 
which they cannot think. The perception of this is growing in 
the consciousness of men. It grows with the growth of 
knowledge ; it is the delight, the reward, the goal of Science. 
From Science it passes into every domain of thought, and in- 
vades, amongst others, the Theology of the Church. 

The Church Trembling at This Fact. — And so we see the men of 
Theology coming out to parley with the men of Science — a white 
flag in their hands, and saying, “ If you will let us alone, we will 
do the same by you. Keep to your own province, do not enter 
ours. The Reign of Law which you proclaim, we admit — out- 
side these walls, but not within them ; let there be peace between 
us.'” But this will never do. There can be no such treaty 
dividing the domain of Truth. Every one Truth is connected 
with every other Truth in this great Universe of God. The con- 
nection may be one of infinite subtlety, and apparent distance — 
running, as it were, underground for a long way, but always 
asserting itself at last, somewhere, and at some time. No 
bargaining, no fencing off the ground — no form of process, 
will avail to bar this right of way. Blessed right, enforced by 
blessed power. Every truth, which is truth indeed, is charged 
with its own consequences, its own analogies, its own sugges- 
tions. These will not be kept outside a fly artificial boundary ; 


164 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


they will range over the whole Field of Thought, nor is there 
any corner of it from which they can be warned away. 

A Brotherhood of Error to be Watched. — And, therefore, we 
must keep a sharp eye, indeed, on every form of words which 
professes to represent a scientific truth. If it be really true 
in one department of thought, the chances are that it will 
have its bearing on every other. And if it be not true, but 
erroneous, its effect will be of a corresponding character ; for 
there is a brotherhood of Error as close as the brotherhood of 
Truth. Therefore, to accept as a truth that which is not a 
truth, or to fail in distinguishing the sense in which a proposi- 
tion may be true, from other senses in which it is not true, is 
an evil having consequences which are, indeed, incalculable. 
There are subjects on which one mistake of this kind will 
poison all the wells of truth, and affect with fatal error the 
whole circle of our thoughts. 

It is against this danger that some men would erect a feeble 
barrier by defending the position that Science and Religion 
may be, and ought to be, kept entirely separate; that they 
belong to wholly different spheres of thought, and that the 
ideas which prevail in the one province have no relation to 
those which prevail in the other. This is a doctrine offering 
many temptations to many minds. It is grateful to scientific 
men who are afraid of being thought hostile to Religion. 
It is grateful to religious men, who are afraid of being thought 
to be afraid of Science. To these, and to all who are troubled 
to reconcile what they have been taught to believe with what 
they have come to know, this doctrine affords a natural and 
convenient escape. There is but one objection to it — but that 
is the fatal objection — that it is not true. 

Spiritual and Intellectual Worlds Inseparable.— The spiritual 
world and the intellectual world are not separated after this 
fashion ; and the notion that they are so separated does but 
encourage men to accept in each, ideas which will at last 
be found to be false in both. The truth is, that there is no 
branch of human inquiry, however purely physical, which is 
more than the word “branch 97 implies — none which is not con- 
nected through endless ramifications with every other — and 
especially that which is the root and center of them all. If He 
who formed the mingle one with Him who is the Orderer of 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


165 


all things concerning which that mind is occupied, there can be 
no end to the points of contact between our different concep- 
tions of them, of Him, and of ourselves. 

The instinct which impels us to seek for harmony in the truths 
of Science and the truths of Religion, is a higher instinct and 
a truer one than the disposition which leads us to evade the 
difficulty by pretending that there is no relation between them. 
Tor, after all, it is a pretense, and nothing more. No man who 
thoroughly accepts a principle in the philosophy of Nature, 
which he feels to be inconsistent with a doctrine of Religion, 
can help having his belief in that doctrine shaken and under- 
mined. We may believe, and we must believe, both in Nature 
and Religion, many things which we cannot understand; but we 
cannot really believe two propositions which are felt to be 
contradictory. 

Two Contradictory Propositions Cannot be Harmonized. — It helps 

us nothing, in such a difficulty, to say that the one proposition 
belongs to Reason and the other proposition belongs to Faith. 
The endeavor to reconcile them is a necessity of the mind. We 
are right in thinking that, if they are both indeed true, they can 
be reconciled, and if they really are fundamentally opposed, 
they cannot both be true : that is to say, there must be some 
errror in our manner of conception in one or in the other, or in 
both. At the very best, each can represent only some partial 
and imperfect aspect of the truth. The error may lie in our 
Theology, or it may lie in what we are pleased to call our 
Science. It may be that some dogma, derived by tradition 
from our fathers, is having its hollowness betrayed by that light 
which sometimes shines upon the ways of God out of a better 
knowledge of His works. It may be that some proud and 
Tash generalization of the schools is having its falsehood proved 
by the violence it does to the deepest instincts of our spiritual 
nature — to 

“ Truths which wake to perish never ! 

Which neither man nor boy, 

Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 

Can utterly abolish or destroy.” 

— Argyll : Reign of Law , pp. 55-9. 

Man, a Part of Nature.— The two testimonies, then, as to the 
personal helpfulness of God — that of physical nature, and that 


166 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


which Christ gives — would seem not to run together. We are 
not apt to suppose they do. The solution, in so far as it can 
be found at all, lies, I think, in Human Life — in our own souls 
in our personal experience. Men talk of nature ; but nature 
has not been consulted at all when we consult that which is 
outside of ourselves only. I have been a part of nature and 
you have been a part of nature. It is the testimony, not of 
the sky and the clouds, not of light and electricity, not of 
summer and winter, not of material bodies subject to material 
laws, that we must seek. These are only a part, and the lowest 
part, the rudimentary part of nature. Nature means all that 
the natural world is, and all that mankind are ; and the most 
important part of nature is the human disposition, human 
faculties, and human life itself. We are not to say that we 
have the revelation of God’s character in nature until we have 
taken, not only that which we find in organic matter and organ- 
ized material, but also human experience in all its various 
relations. The final reconciliation of the problem is to be 
found in this Nature completed in Man. * * * * We find 
an evolution of emotions. Where did they come from ? Why 
have we thought-power that the flowers have not? Whence 
came that life which flames in genius, and which pours itself 
abroad in all the munificence of beneficence the world around, 
and has for ages ? Is not that nature ? Are we not to recog- 
nize these facts, and deduce from them some conceptions of 
God ? — Beecher : Vol. 7, p. 335. 

Duty of Science to Teach in Harmony with the Religious Senti- 
ments of the Race. — It is the duty of science to work and to teach 
in harmony with the religious sentiments of mankind. When it 
sets itself in opposition to religion, its skepticism carries with 
it the double reproach of doing evil, and of going out of its way 
to do evil. I take religion here in no narrow sense. Let every 
man construct the details of his creed for himself. I take it in 
the broadest sense, as the development of that one idea in 
which Christian, Mohammedan and heathen agree — the belief in 
immortality. This is the one universal religious doctrine which 
soiritually dignifies humanity £nd elevates it above the brutes. 
On the one hand it leads the human mind directly to God, on 
the other it is itself a necessary outcome of theism. Nature 
cannot have been without a Maker, and if there is a God, all 
who have ever lived, to use the words of Jesus, “live unto Him.” - 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


167 


In that conservation of spiritual forces, which is surely as real 
as that of the grosser energy which works the material world, 
no living soul can ever die unto God. Dead they may be to us, 
as the sunshine of last summer is dead ; but living still, as sure- 
ly as that lost sunshine still vibrates somewhere and for some 
end in the universe of God. Science itself may, more or less, 
distinctly reason out this conclusion ; but, independently of 
science, it is forever fixed in the instincts of humanity, and it 
is madness to set it at naught. 

But let us hope that such tendencies to evil companionship, 
on the part of science, as appear here and there, are but evan- 
escent, and believe that even now they are vastly outweighed 
by her substantial services to humanity. Let us look on the 
god-like form of science, as the bold and courageous investiga- 
tor bringing her hard-earned trophies from every field of labor 
and adventure ; let us look on her as the tender and loving ap- 
plier of all her treasures to relieve the wants and promote the 
happiness of mankind ; let us look on her as the wise and dili- 
gent instructress, training the minds of men into harmony with 
nature and with God. So shall we recognize her divine linea- 
ments. So shall we claim for her her rights at the hand of 
society, and shall rejoice in her fulfillment of her great mission 
in the world — a mission of which we have seen but the small 
beginnings, and which must go on blessing humanity till, in the 
upward progress of our race, and the development of the plans 
of God, science and religion, earth and heaven, the material and 
the spiritual, time and eternity, become one in the light of the 
glory that excelleth, for they are really all one in Him who is 
all in all . — Principal Dawson: Princeton Review, November, 1878. 

Science but the Knowledge of Things that are Visible.— Science is 
but the knowledge of things that are. She has no right to 
infer the non-existence of things that are beyond her sphere. 
If her instruments fail to detect immaterial existence, it does 
not thence follow that the immaterial universe is a mere delu- 
sion. In the material world there may be, there probably are, 
properties beyond her ken. It may be well that an additional 
sense, without any change in external objects, would bring us 
into cognizance of a realm of sensation and perception as wide 
and rich, as fruitful and instructive, as that to which we now 
have access through eye and ear, and as entirely outside of our 
possible conception at this present as sounds or colors are to 


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SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


one born deaf or blind. Indeed, there are classes of perfectly 
authenticated facts which completely baffle science, and which 
scientific men therefore ignore. In the region claimed — falsely, 
as we think — by the (so-called) Spiritualists, including animal 
magnetism, there occur phenomena which cannot be classed 
under now known physical laws. We believe them to have no 
connection with extra-mundane influence ; but the superstition 
which claims them as its own has no so strong allies as the 
scientists, who, because they cannot account for them, refuse 
to believe them. The truth is, science has no rightful negative 
beyond her own sphere. The anatomist, the physiologist, the 
chemist, the astronomer, is fully authorized to say, “ With the 
implements and methods of my special department, I have 
found no vestiges of other than material existence, and I am 
certain that my inquiries and those of my brother-scientists, 
who think as I do, have covered the entire field of my particu- 
lar science.” But they are as little justified in maintaining 
collectively that there is no existence outside of their united 
fields, as any one of them is in denying the reality of the 
departments specially under charge of the others. — Prof . A. P . 
Peabody : Princeton Review , May , 1878. 

The Anti-Theological Bias. — Thus the anti-theological bias leads 
to serious error, both when it ignores the essential share hith- 
erto taken by religious systems in giving force to certain 
principles of action; in part absolutely good, and in part good 
relatively to the needs of the time, and again when it prompts 
the notion that now these principles might be so established 
on rational bases as to rule men effectually through their 
enlightened intellects. 

These errors, however, which the anti-theological bias pro- 
duces, are superficial, compared with the error that remains. 
The antagonism to supertitious beliefs habitually leads to 
entire rejection of them. They are thrown aside with the 
assumption that along with so much that is wrong, there is 
nothing right. Whereas, the truth, recognizable only after an- 
tagonism has spent itself, is, that the wrong beliefs rejected are 
superficial, and that a right belief hidden by them remains 
when they have been rejected. Those who defend, equally 
with those who assail, religious creeds, suppose that everything 
turns on the maintenance of the particular dogmas at issue; 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


169 


whereas, the dogmas are but temporary forms of that which is 
permanent. * ****** 

Religious Consciousness Will Not Die Away.— No one need expect, 
then, that the religious consciousness will die away, or will 
change the lines of its evolution. Its specialties of form, 
once strongly marked, and becoming less distinct during past 
mental progress, will continue to fade ; but the substance of 
the consciousness will persist. That the object matter can be 
replaced by another object matter, as supposed by those who 
think the “ Religion of Humanity n will be the religion of the 
future, is a belief countenanced neither by induction nor by 
deduction. However dominant may become the moral senti- 
ment enlisted on behalf of Humanity, it can never exclude the 
sentiment, alone properly religious, awakened by that which is 
behind Humanity, and behind all other things. The child, by 
wrapping its head in the bedclothes, may for a moment get rid 
of the distinct consciousness of surrounding darkness ; but 
the consciousness, though rendered less vivid, survives, and 
imagination persists in occupying itself with that which lies 
beyond perception. No such thing as a “Religion of Human- 
ity ” can ever do more than temporarily shut out the thought 
of a Power of which Humanity is but a small and fugitive pro- 
duct — which was in course of ever-changing manifestation 
before Humanity was, and will continue through other mani- 
ifestations when Humanity has ceased to be . — Herbert Spencer : 
Popular Science Monthly , July, 1873. 

Nothing God Wade Secular. — I grudge that epithet of secular to 
any matter whatsoever. But I do more ; I deny it to anything 
which God has made, even to the tiniest of insects, the most 
insignificant atom of dust. To those who believe in God, and 
try to see all things in God, the most minute natural phenome- 
non cannot be secular. It must be divine. I say, deliberately, 
divine ; and I can use no less lofty word. The grain of dust is 
a thought of God; God’s power made it; God’s wisdom gave 
it whatsoever properties or qualities it may possess. God’s 
providence has put it in the place where it is now, and has 
ordained that it should be in that place at that moment, by a 
train of causes and effects which reaches back to the very crea- 
tion of the universe. The grain of dust can no more go from 
God’s presence, or flee from God’s Spirit, than you or I can do. 


170 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


If it go up to the physical heaven, and float (as it actually often 
does) far above the clouds, in those higher strata of the atmos- 
phere which the aeronaut has never visited, whither the Alpine 
snow-peaks do not rise, even there it will be obeying physical 
laws which we hastily term laws of Nature, but which are really 
the laws of God; and if it go down into the physical abyss; if 
it be buried fathoms, miles, below the surface, and become an 
atom of some rock still in the process of consolidation, has it 
escaped from God, even in the bowels of the earth ? Is it not 
still there, obeying physical laws of pressure, heat, crystalliza- 
tion, and so forth, which are laws of God ? Only look at all 
created things in this light — as the expressions of God’s mind 
and will, u the voice of God revealed in facts,” as Bacon says, 
and then you will not fear physical science. —Charles Kingsley : 
Popular Science Monthly, August, 1872. 

The World First a Womb, Then a Nursery. — Bankrupt nature ! 
Yes ; but do not all scientific speculations, on the subject of 
the final destiny of the cosmos, bankrupt nature ? Is not the 
final result, according to all such speculations, the running down 
of all forms of force into heat and the final equal diffusion of 
this heat, and so the final death of the cosmos ? Is not this 
the necessary final result, acccording to the doctrine of the dis- 
sipation of energy f But, according to our view, this event, 
though inevitable, does not take place until, by the very process, 
much, if not all, natural forces shall be raised little and sepa- 
rated as embodied forms of Spiritual intelligences ; until there 
exist only a moral and spiritual cosmos, with love or spiritual 
attraction as its universal law, as gravitation is now of the 
material cosmos. Thus, the material cosmos becomes first a 
womb and then a nursery for the spiritual children of God, and 
having served its purpose disappears. Nature becomes first a 
gestating and then a nursing mother of man, in afar deeper and 
more literal sense than is usually supposed. This, then, is the 
end, the object, the whole significance of the material cosmos. 
What other significance so noble, so worthy of God ? Yea, 
what other significance, I might ask, is possible or conceivable 
as at all worthy of Him, and of the past eternity of His prep- 
aration? — Prof.Le Conte: Princeton Revieic, November, 1878. 

Final Causes Do Not Disappear as Physical Science Advances.— As 

physical science advances, final causes do not disappear. The 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


171 


principle of design changes its mode of application, but loses 
none of its force : it is merely transferred from the region of 
facts to that of laws. We do not consider the sun as less in- 
tended to warm and vivify the tribes of plants and animals, 
because we find evidences that the earth and other planets 
were developed in the vast periods of past ages from a com- 
mon nebulous mass. We are rather, by the discovery of so 
general a law, led into a scene of wider design — of deeper con- 
trivance — of more comprehensive adjustments. The object of 
such views is not to lead to physical truth, but to connect such 
truth — obtained by its proper processes and methods — with 
our views of God — the Master of the universe. — Prof. Le Conte : 
Popular Science Monthly , April, 1873. 

Opposite Poles of Philosophy. — Force and matter, or spirit and 
matter, or God and Nature ; these are the opposite poles of 
philosophy — they are the opposite poles of thought. There is 
no clear thinking without them. Not only religion and virtue, 
but science and philosophy, cannot even exist without them. 
The belief in spirit, like the belief in matter, rests on its own 
basis of phenomena. The true domain of philosophy is to re- 
concile these with each other. — Prof. Le Conte: Popular Science 
Monthly , December, 1873. 

Is Religion and Science in Harmony? — Can, then, religion and 
science march in harmony ? It is true that their methods are 
very different ; the religious man is attached by his heart to his 
religion, and cannot endure to hear its truth discussed, and he 
fears scientific discoveries which might, in some slight way, 
discredit what he holds more important than all the rest. The 
scientific man seeks truth, regardless of consequences; he 
balances probabilities, and inclines temporarily to that opinion 
which has most probabilities, in its favor, ready to abandon it 
the moment the balance shifts, and the evidence in favor of a 
new hypothesis may prevail. 

One Powerful Element in Common.— These, indeed, are radical 
differences, but the two characters have one powerful element 
in common. Neither the religious nor the scientific man will 
consent to sacrifice his opinions to material gain, to political 
ends, nor to pleasure. Both agree in the love of intellectual 
pursuits, and in the practice of a simple, regular and laborious 
life, and both work in a disinterested way for the public good. 


172 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


A strong evidence of this fundamental agreement is found in 
the number of sons of clergymen who have distinguished 
themselves as scientific investigators . — Francis Galton : Popu- 
lar Science Monthly , May , 1873. 

The Great Investigators Sprang from Christian Colleges.— But 

whence have proceeded these grand discoveries and inven- 
tions of the present age ? Have they sprung suddenly from 
no antecedent ? Or, like other human attainments, have they 
a history of inception and growth? Have they roots in the 
past — germs which have been nursed into their present fruit- 
age ? It will require no very extended research to see that 
the scientific studies of the modern age have proceeded from 
the sohools that throughout Europe and America stud the 
land as the bright stars stud the sky. The great investigators 
have either been college-bred men, or they have used the 
appliances of colleges and universities for their successful 
work. From the colleges they received their taste for explor- 
ation, the incentive to it. And whence came the colleges and 
universities? Who founded Prague, and Vienna, and Heidel- 
berg, and Leipzig, and Tubingen, and Jena, and Halle, and 
Gottingen, and Berlin, and Bonn? Who founded Salamanca, 
and Oviedo, and Valladolid, and Oxford, and Cambridge, St. 
Andrews, and Aberdeen? I could add scores more of distin- 
guished names in all the countries of Europe, names that are 
very dear to science, where her streams have been conserved 
and widened and deepened as the centuries went on. Who, I 
say, founded these great centers of learning, into which what- 
ever of knowledge Greece and Arabia has gathered flowed as 
into appropriate homes. The men of the Bible founded them. 
They were pressed to such grand works just by the impulse of 
that grand old book of God. When all the rest of mankind 
were caring either for the mere necessities of physical being, 
or for wars of aggrandizement, Bible men were holding up the 
torch of science and striving by its light to read and under- 
stand the wonderful works of God. — Dr . Crosby : Tribune- 
Fxtra , No, 26. 

[For confirmation of this, read Lecky, in our chapter on Christianity. 
—Ed.-] 

Religion and the Bihle Two Different Things.— The conflict be- 
tween religion and science, and the conflict between the Bible 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


17a 


and science, are not equivalent expressions. Eeligions are 
manifold, the Bible is one. Eeligions are largely objective. 
The Bible, in its letter, is objective. In its contest with Eeligion 
as Eeligion, it has been represented by courts and councils. 
Science has often gained a decided victory, for she has been 
the advocate of truth, while Eeligion was the advocate of error. 
Such a contrast has often taken place, and in these the world 
was indebted to Science for deliverance from the bondage of 
superstition. But between the Bible and Science we may deny 
that a conflict ever existed. The Bible is on the side of Science. 
It supplies the links in the scientific chain which our experi- 
mental science would even fail to reach. — Ibid. 

The True and False Church. — Or, if you are disgusted by the 
one-sided, illiberal judgment passed by many Christians on 
matters of art and science, do not ascribe this to the spirit of 
Christianity itself. * * * * Or, when disposed to take 

offence at churchmen who timidly resist any freer political 
development, do not forget that the true Church maintains, 
in the words of the apostle, that “ where the spirit of the Lord 
is, there is liberty,” and that Christianity furthers the cause of 
freedom everywhere on the one foundation of the Truth which 
maketh free. So soon as you recognize the fact that the 
imperfection of the Church and of individual Christians is not 
a consequence but a contradiction of the genuine spirit of 
Christianity, and, therefore, is not by any means to be laid to 
its charge ; that the obstructions often placed in the way of 
genuine culture and true progress are produced by those im- 
perfections, and not by the nature of Christianity itself ; that the 
tendency of both, when rightly understood, is essentially the 
same — viz : to help man to attain his divine destination ^ and 
that Christianity has proved itself to be even historically the 
richest source and the surest exponent of true culture — then 
our scruples vanish, and the true method of reconciliation is 
discovered. Let us not lay to the charge of Christ Himself, or of 
Christianity, the faults of His short-sighted, narrow-minded, or 
passionate disciples.— Christlieb : Modern Doubt and Christian 
Belief , p. 54. 

Aims of Scripture and Science Not Alike.— Against the attacks of 
anti-miraculous natural science, we must first of all draw a 
sharp line between the aim and objects of the Scriptures and 


174 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 


that of natural science ; showing that the former, as a record 
of Divine revelation, only touches upon the region of physics 
in a fragmentary manner, and with a few general outlines, for 
the purpose of laying a foundation for its moral and spiritual 
teachings ; while the latter is confined to an empirical observa- 
tion of things as they are, and can, therefore, only conjecture 
as to the processes by which the world originated, but cannot 
possibly render the existence of a spiritual and invisible world 
a doubtful matter by any results of microscopic or telescopic 
investigations. After having rejected the anti-miraculous 
axioms of modern science by resting on the Christian, as the 
only reasonable idea of God and His relation to the world, we 
should proceed to take our stand upon the harmony which has 
already been established in general outlines between the Bible 
cosmogony and the results of natural science, as a fact which 
justifies the hope of a future solution of all differences which 
yet remain . — Christlieb : Address before Evangelical Alliance , 
New York Tribune-Extra , No. 12. 

Sectarianism Unlovely Everywhere.— Sectarianism in science, 
like sectarianism in religion, is unlovely in itself and baneful 
in its consequences. Just as nothing is morally so ruinous as 
cultivating a habit of detecting only the faults and failings of 
our fellow-men, so nothing is intellectually more ruinous than 
cherishing a habit of depreciation of any kind of knowledge 
whatever . — Robert Flint : Edinburgh . 


MIRACLES. 


^INABILITY to Realize the Times of the Miracle— It is evident 
® that the effect which the visible order of nature has upon 
some minds is, that as soon as they realize what a miracle is, 
they are stopped by what appears to them a simple sense of its 
impossibility. So long as they only believe by habit and 
education, they accept a miracle without difficulty, because they 
do not realize it as an event which actually took place in the 
world ; the alteration of the face of the world, and the whole 
growth of intervening history, throw the miracles of the 
gospel into a remote perspective, in which they are rather 
seen as a picture than as real occurrences. But as soon 
as they see that, if these miracles are true, they once really 
happened, what they feel then is the apparent sense of 
their impossibility. It is not a question of evidence with them ; 
when they realize, for example, that our Lord’s resurrection, if 
true, was a visible fact or occurrence, they have the seeming 
certain perception that it is an impossible occurrence. “I can- 
not,” a person says to himself in effect, “tear myself from the 
type of experience, and join myself to another. I cannot quit 
order and law for what is eccentric. There is a repulsion 
between such facts and my belief as strong as that between 
physical substances. In the mere effort to conceive these 
amazing scenes as real ones, I fall back upon myself and upon 
that type of reality which the order of nature has impressed 
upon me.” 

Now, when such a person proceeds to probe the ground of 
his deep objection to a miracle, the first thing, I think, that 
cannot but strike him is how very poor any reason he can 
allege and specify is, compared with the amount of his own 
inward feeling of certainty. If he is a reflecting person, he 
cannot but be struck of his own accord with this singular dis- 
proportion between the two — on the one hand, an overpowering 
prepossession ; on the other, hardly anything to sustain it. The 


176 


MIRACLES. 


form in which he will first put his reason to himself will per- 
haps be, that miracles are inconceivable to him. 

What is It that is Inconceivable ?— But what is meant by this 
assertion ? That the causes are inconceivable ? But the causes 
of the commonest physical facts are the same. That the facts 
are inconceivable ? But the facts are not inconceivable, but 
conceivable. I can conceive the change of water into wine 
just as easily as I can conceive any chemical conversion : that 
is, I can first conceive water, and then I can conceive wine in 
the place of water ; and that is all I can do in the case of any 
change of one substance into another in chemistry. The 
absence of the medium of an artificial process only makes the 
cause inconceivable, not the fact. So I can form the idea of a 
dead man alive again, just as easily as I can of the process of 
decay ; one fact is as conceivable as another, while the causes 
are alike inconceivable of both. 

We cannot rest, then, at the reason of inconceivableness, 
but must go on to some further one. Is it that miracles are 
physical results, produced without means, without a physical 
medium intervening between the Divine will and the result? 
But we cannot pronounce upon the fact of the total absence of 
means, but only on their invisibility, which belongs to many 
steps and media in nature. Hor can we pronounce upon the 
necessity of physical means ; for even in the natural action of 
will or spirit upon matter, there must be a point at which the 
one acts on the other without a medium, however inconceivable 
that may be ; otherwise, if the media never end, the one never 
gets at the other at all. 

Unlikcncss to Order of Nature. — The reason, then, against mira- 
cles that we come to at last, and in which all these vaguer 
reasons end, is simply their, unlikeness to the order of nature. 
A suspension of the order of nature is the ordinary phrase in 
which we express this unlikeness to the order of nature ; but 
whether or not we call unlikeness by this term, the fact itself 
is the ultimate objection to a miracle. It was shown, however, 
what the expectation of likeness was, and that no reason 
against an unlike event as such was producible or ever imag- 
inable. 

The rejecter of miracles has, indeed, in the overpowering 
force of an impression upon his mind, something to which 


MIRACLES. 


177 


argument is hardly adapted. Every time he recalls a miracle 
to his imagination he recalls a felt something at the bottom 
which, in his own idea, closes the door against it; something at 
the root of the matter which is untouched, a true cause of 
conviction which is unanswered; he cannot conceive that so 
strong a rejecting influence as he feels can be without a rational 
necessity ; that the force of the resistance in his mind is not 
its own vindication. 

A Judicial Question. — And yet the question of the possibility 
of anything, possibility, that is, as far as we know, is a judicial 
question which must be decided in the same way as a question 
of fact. There is a court which decides this question — the 
inner court of our mind, in which witnesses are cited and 
evidence is heard. The witnesses cited into this court are all 
the faculties and perceptions of our minds ; and when they have 
answered to the summons, one question is put to them — Does 
any reason exist why a miracle is impossible ? If they know 
of none, the case is over. The court of possibility decides in 
the same way in which a court of fact does. It is an open 
court, into which all mankind are admitted ; for, indeed, the 
witness in that court is the collective reason of mankind, which 
appears there to give an account of itself, to declare to its own 
known contents, and whether amongst them all there is found 
a reason for the impossibility of a miracle. Science has its sum- 
mary evidence of fact by which it challenges foregone conclu- 
sions ; and reason has the same. 

Imagination as a Factor. — What has been, then, in the present 
instance, the cause at work — that which has made a reason, 
when there was none, against the miraculous as such ? I cannot 
but think that under an intellectual disguise it is the imagina- 
tion. The design, as I have stated, of the inductive principle 
or belief in the order of nature is a practical one — to enable 
provision to be made for human life and welfare : which could 
not be done unless we could reckon upon the likeness of the 
past to the future. For without this expectation, what would 
be our prospect ? Every moment of nature might be its last, 
and we should live upon the constant brink of utter change 
and dissolution, which would paralyze all action in us. But 
the impression, as it exists in us by nature, being entirely a 
practical one, and this being its legitimate and constitutional 


178 


MIRACLES. 


scope, imagination seizes hold of it and diverts it from its 
scope ; by brooding upon it, exaggerates it : converts a prac- 
tical expectation into a scientific truth, and extracts from an 
unreasoning instinct what it cannot by its very nature contain 
— a universal intellectual proposition that the order of nature 
is immutable . — Mozley : Miracles , p. 49. 

What Uniformity of Nature Amounts to. — We grant, then, we unre- 
servedly grant, the uniformity of visible nature ; and now let us 
compute how much, or how little, it amounts to. Grant, of all 
our progressions, that, as far as our eye can carry us, they are 
invariable ; and then let us only reflect how short a way we 
can trace any of them upwards. In speculating on the origin 
of an event, we may be able to assign the one which imme- 
diately preceded, and term it the proximate cause; or even 
ascend by two or three footsteps, till we have discovered 
some anterior event which we term the remote cause. But 
how soon do we arrive at the limit of possible investigation, 
beyond which, if ^e attempt to go, we lose ourselves among 
the depths and the obscurities of a region that is unknown. 
Observation may conduct us a certain length backwards in the 
train of causes and effects ; but, after having done its utter- 
most, we feel, that, above and beyond its loftiest place of 
ascent, there are still higher steps in the train which we vainly 
try to reach, and find them inaccessible. 

It is even so throughout all philosophy. After having arrived 
at the remotest causes which man can reach his way to, we 
shall ever find there are higher and remoter causes still, which 
distance all his powers of research, and so will ever remain in 
deepest concealment from his view. Of this higher part of the 
train he has no observation^ Of these remoter causes, and 
their mode of succession, he can positively say nothing. For 
aught he knows, they may be under the immediate control of 
higher beings in the universe ; or, like the upper part of a chain, a 
few of whose closing links are all that is visible to us, they 
may be directly appended to the throne, and at all times 
subject to the instant pleasure of a prayer-hearing God. — 
Thomas Chalmers : Yol. 1, pp. 352-4, Carter’s Edition. 

[I was led to the study of the above passage by Prof. Tyndall’s com- 
mendation of it. Did he look into the mirror, held up to him, in vain?— 
Ed.] 


MIRACLES. 


179 


Can You Class Miracles with Natural Wonders ?— Wherein, it 
may be asked, does the miracle differ from any event in the or- 
dinary course of nature? For that, too, is wonderful; the fact 
that it is a marvel of continual recurrence may rob it, subjec- 
tively, of our admiration ; we may be content to look at it with 
a dull, incurious eye, and to think we find in its constant repe- 
tition the explanation of its law, even as we often find in this a 
reason for excusing ourselves altogether from wonder and 
reverent admiration ; yet it does not remain the less a marvel 
still. 

To this question some have answered, that since all is thus 
marvellous, since the grass growing, the seed sprouting, thb 
sun rising, are as much the result of powers which we cannot 
trace or measure, as the water turned into wine, or the sick 
healed by a word, or the blind restored to vision by a touch, 
there is, therefore, no such thing as a miracle, eminently so- 
called. We have no right, they say, in the mighty and complex 
miracle of nature which encircles us on every side, to separate 
off in an arbitrary manner some certain facts, and to affirm of 
this and that that they are wonders, and all the rest ordinary 
processes of nature ; but rather we must confine ourselves to 
one language or the other, and count all miracle, or nothing. 
# * * * * All is wonder ; to make a man, is at least as great 
a marvel as to raise a man from the dead. The seed that 
multiplies in the furrow is as marvellous as the bread that 
multiplied in Christ’s hands. The miracle is not a greater 
manifestation of God’s power than those ordinary and ever- 
Tepeated processes; but it is a different manifestation. By 
those other, God is speaking at all times and to all the 
world ; they are a vast, unbroken revelation of Him. Yet, 
from the very circumstance that nature is thus speaking ever- 
more to all ; that this speaking is diffused over all time, 
addressed unto all men ; that its sound has gone out into all 
lands, from the very constancy and universality of this language, 
it may fail to make itself heard. It cannot be said to stand in 
nearer relation to one man than to another ; to confirm one 
man’s word more than that of others ; to address one man’s 
conscience more than that of every other man. However, it 
may sometimes have, it must often lack, a peculiar and personal 
significance. But in the miracle, wrought in the sight of some 
certain men, and claiming their special attention, there is a 


180 


MIRACLES. 


speaking to them in particular. There is, then, a voice in 
nature which addresses itself directly to them, a singling of 
them out from the multitude. It is plain that God has now a 
peculiar word which they are to give heed to, a message to 
which He is bidding them to listen. 

Extraordinary Causality Attends Them. — An extraordinary di- 
vine causality, and not that ordinary which we acknowledge 
everywhere and in everything, belongs, then, to the essence of 
the miracle : Powers of God other than those which have 
always been working; such, indeed, as most seldom or never 
have been working before. The unresting activity of God, 
which at other times hides and conceals itself behind the veil 
of what we term natural laws, does in the miracle unveil itself; 
it steps out from its concealment, and the hand which works 
is laid bare. Beside and beyond the ordinary operations of 
nature, higher powers (higher, not as coming from a higher 
source, but as bearing upon higher ends) intrude and make 
themselves felt even at the very springs and sources of her 
power. 

Natural May Become Miraculous to Us. — While it is of the very 
essence of the miracle that it should be thus “a new thing,” it is 
not with this denied that the natural itself may become miracu- 
lous to us by the way in which it is timed, by the ends which it 
is made to serve. It is, indeed, true that aught which is perfectly 
explicable from the course of nature and history, is assuredly 
no miracle in the most proper sense of the word. At the same 
time, the finger of God may be so plainly discernible in it; there 
may be in it so remarkable a convergence of many unconnected 
causes to a single end ; it may so meet a crisis in the lives of 
men, or in the onward march of the kingdom of God, may stand 
in such noticeable relation with God’s great work of redemp- 
tion, that even while it is plainly explicable by natural causes, 
while there were such, perfectly adequate to produce the effects, 
we yet may be entirely justified in terming it a miracle, a provi- 
dential, although not an absolute, miracle. Absolute it cannot 
be called, since there were known causes perfectly capable of 
bringing it about, and, these existing, it would be superstition 
to betake ourselves to others, or to seek to disconnect it from 
these. Yet the natural may in a manner lift itself up into the 
miraculous, by the moment at which it falls out, by the purpo- 


MIRACLES. 


181 


ses which it is made to fulfill. It is a subjective wonder, a 
wonder for us , though not an objective, not a wonder in itself. 

Instances Cited. — Thus, many of the plagues of Egypt were the 
natural plagues of the land — these, it is true, raised and quick- 
ened into far direr than their usual activity. In itself it was 
nothing miraculous that grievous swarms of flies should infest 
the houses of the Egyptians, or that flights of locusts 
should spoil their fields, or that a murrain should destroy 
their cattle. None of these visitations were, or are, unknown 
in that land ; but the intensity of all these plagues ; the dread 
succession in which they followed on one another ; their con- 
nection with the word of Moses, which went before ; with Pha- 
raoh’s trial, which was proceeding with Israel’s deliverance 
which they helped onward, the order of their coming and 
going, — all these entirely justify us in calling them “the signs 
and wonders of Egypt,” even as such is evermore the Scrip- 
tural language about them. (Deut. iv : 34 ; Ps. lxxviii : 43 ; Acts 
vii: 36.) 

Providential Acts. — It is no absolute miracle that a coin should 
be found in a fish’s mouth, or that a lion should meet a man 
and slay him, or that a thunder-storm should happen at an 
unusual period of the year ; and yet these circumstances may 
be so timed for strengthening faith, for punishing disobedi- 
ence, for awakening repentance ; they may serve such high 
purposes in God’s moral government, that we at once range 
them in the catalogue of miracles, without seeking to make an 
anxious discrimination between the miracle absolute and pro- 
vidential. Especially have they a right to their place among 
these, when (as in each of the instances alluded to above) the 
final event is a sealing of a foregoing word from the Lord : for 
so, as a prophecy, as miracles of His foreknowledge , they claim 
that place, even if not as miracles of His power. It is true, of 
course, of these even more than of any other, that they exist 
only for the religious mind, for the man who believes that God 
rules, and not merely in power, but in wisdom, in righteousness 
and in love : for him they will be eminently signs, signs of a 
present working God. In the case of the more absolute mir- 
acle, it will be sometimes possible to extort from the ungodly, 
as of old from the magicians of Egypt, the unwilling confes- 
sion : “ This is the finger of God ; ” but in the case of these this 


182 


MIRACLES. 


will be well nigb impossible : since there is always the natural 
solution in which they may take refuge, beyond which it will be 
impossible to compel them to proceed. 

Miracle Neither Nature nor Against Nature.— But while the mir- 
acle is not thus nature, so neither is it against nature. That 
language, however common, is wholly unsatisfactory, which 
speaks of these wonderful works of God, as violations of a 
natural law. Beyond nature, beyond and above the nature which 
we know, they are, but not contrary to it. Nor let it be said 
that this distinction is an idle one ; so far from being idle* 
Spinoza’s whole assault upon the miracles (not his real objec- 
tions, for they lie much deeper, but his assault) turns, as we 
shall see, upon the advantage which he has known how to take 
of this faulty statement of the truth; and when that has been 
rightly stated, becomes at once beside the mark. The miracle 
is not thus unnatural ; nor could it be such: since the unnat- 
ural, the contrary to order, is of itself the ungodly, and can in 
no way therefore be affirmed of a divine work, such as that 
with which we have to do. The very idea of the world, as 
more than one name which it bears testifies, is that of an order : 
that, therefore, which comes in to enable it to realize this idea 
which it has lost, will scarcely itself be a disorder. So far 
from this, the true miracle is a higher and a purer nature, com- 
ing down out of the world of untroubled harmonies into this 
world of ours, which so many discords have jarred and dis- 
turbed, and bringing this back again, though it be but for one 
mysterious prophetic moment, into harmony with that higher. 
The healing of the sick can in no way be termed against 
nature, seeing that the sickness which was healed was against 
the true nature of man ; that it is sickness which is abnormal* 
and not health. The healing is the restoration of the primitive 
order. We should see in the miracle not the infraction of a 
law, but the neutralizing of a lower law, the suspension of it 
for a time by a higher. Of this abundant analogous examples 
are evermore going forward before our eyes. Continually we 
behold in the world around us lower laws held in restraint by 
higher, mechanic by dynamic, chemical by vital, physical by 
moral ; yet we do not say, when the lower thus gives place in 
favor of the higher, that there was any violation of law, or 
that anything contrary to nature came to pass* rather we 


MIRACLES. 


183 


acknowledge the law of a greater freedom swallowing up the 
law of a lesser. 

Spinoza’s Supplement. — When Spinoza affirmed that nothing 
can happen in nature which opposes its universal laws, he acutely 
saw that even then he had not excluded the miracle, and, 
therefore, to clench the exclusion, added — “or which does not 
follow from the same laws.” But all which experience can 
teach us is, that these powers which are working in our world 
will not reach to these effects. Whence dare we to conclude, 
that because none which we know will bring them about, so 
none exist which will do so. They exceed the laws of our 
nature, but it does not, therefore, follow that they exceed the 
laws of all nature. If the animals were capable of a reflective 
act, man would appear a miracle to them, as the angels do to 
us, and as the animals would themselves appear to a lower 
circle of organic life. The comet is a miracle as regards our 
solar system : that is, it does not own the laws of our system ; 
neither do these laws explain it. 

Higher Laws Holding the Lower in Suspense. — Yet is there a 
higher and wider law of the heavens, whether fully discovered 
or not, in which its motions are included as surely as those of 
the planets which stand in immediate relation to our sun. 
When I lift my arm, the law of gravitation is not, as far as my 
arm is concerned, denied or annihilated ; it exists as much as 
ever, but is held in suspense by the higher law of my will. 
The chemical laws which would bring about decay in animal 
substances still subsist, even when they are restrained and 
hindered by the salt which keeps those substances from cor- 
ruption. The law of sin in a regenerate man is held in 
continual check by the law of the spirit of life ; yet is it in his 
members still, not indeed working, for a mightier law has 
stepped in and now holds it in abeyance, but still there, and 
ready to work, did that higher law cease from its more effectual 
operation. What in each of these cases is wrought may be 
against one particular law, that law being contemplated in its 
isolation, and rent away from the complex of laws, whereof it 
forms only a part. But uo law does stand thus alone, and 
it is not against, but rather in entire harmony with, the system 
of laws ; for the law of those laws is, that where powers come 
into conflict, the weaker shall give place to the stronger, the 


184 


MIRACLES. 


lower to the higher. In the miracle, this world of ours is 
drawn into and within a higher order of things; laws are then 
working in it, which are not the laws of its fallen condition; 
but laws of mightier range and higher perfection; and as such, 
they claim to make themselves felt; they assert the pre- 
eminence and predominance which are rightly their own. — 
Trench : Miracles , pp. 9-18. 

Supernatural Complementary to the Natural. — The true notion of 
the natural cannot be held without the complementary idea of 
the supernatural, since nature can have no beginning in itself 
(the thought involving a contradiction), and, therefore, demands 
a power older than itself, beyond and above itself. It is thus 
that the Scripture not only gives, but necessitates, the 
idea of the supernatural, although there is no parade of 
philosophical language in setting it forth. There are also to be 
found therein the specific diversities of the idea. # * * * 

But it is in the creative account that this blending becomes 
most remarkable. The young nature, though strictly a nature, 
seems as near to God as the supernatural. Still are they 
clearly distinguishable. Two false notions have warped our 
thinking here. It may be said, too, that they are as anti- 
biblical as they are false. All in creation we have been 
accustomed to regard as supernatural ; all since creation as 
the uninterrupted natural, with the exception, here and there, 
of a few interspersed miraculous events. An excessive natural- 
ism on the one hand has been the counterpart to an excessive 
supernaturalism on the other. How, the more thoroughly we 
study Genesis 1, the more it will be found that the strictly super- 
natural is in the beginnings, or rather in the mornings, of each 
day, whilst the carrying on, or the completion of each process, is 
strictly nature — the mora, as Augustine calls it, the pause, 
quiescence, or evening in creation. There is in each of these 
days, or these mornings, whether we regard them as following 
or preceding the repose, a word going forth, and then a process 
of obedience to a new law. Thus each word is a new power 
dropped into the stream of a previous nature which had, in like 
manner, a word for its beginning. Hence, creation is a succes- 
sion of growths, generations. — Taylor Lewis : Lange’s Genesis , 
p. 145. 

The Office of Nature. — It will further assist our conceptions 
and modify our impressions of this subject, if we inquire briefly 


MIRACLES. 


185 


Into the office and probable use of what is called nature. That 
nature is not appointed as any final end of God, we have before 
shown. It is only ordained, as we then intimated, to be played 
upon by the powers ; that is, by God himself and all free agents 
under Him. Instead of being the veritable system or universe 
of God, as in our sensuality, or scientific conceit, we make it, we 
may call it more truly the ball or medial substance occupied by so 
many players ; that is, by the spiritual universe under God as the 
Lord of Hosts. There could be no commerce of so many play- 
ers in the game referred to, without some medium, or medial 
instrument ; and the instrument needed to be a constant, 
invariable substance, as regards shape, weight, size, elasticity, 
inertia, and all the natural properties pertaining to it. If the 
ball changed weight, color, density, shape, every moment, no 
.skill could be acquired or evinced in the use of it; there would 
be no real test in the game, and no social commerce of play in 
the parties using it. Therefore, it needed to be, so far, a con- 
stant quantity. So, demonstrably, there needs to be, between 
us and God, and between us and one another, some constant 
quantity, so that we can act upon each other, trace the effects 
of our practice and that of others, learn the mind of God, the 
misery and baseness of wrong, the worth of principles, and 
ihe blessedness of virtue, from what we experience : attaining 
thus to such a degree of wisdom that we can set our life on a 
footing of success and divine approbation. What we call 
nature is this constant quantity interposed between us and God, 
and between us and each other — the great ball, in using which 
our life-battle is played. Or, considering the grand immensity 
of planetary worlds, careering through the fields of light, all 
these, we may say, rolling eternally onward in their rounds of 
order, bearing their wondrous furniture with them, such as 
science discovers, and weaving their interminable lines of 
oauses, are the ball of exercise, in which, and by which, God is 
training and teaching the spiritual hosts of His empire. They 
are set in a system of immutable order and constancy, for this 
reason ; but with the design beforehand that all the free beings 
or powers shall play their activity on them and into them, and 
that He, too, by the free insertion of His, may turn them 
about by His counsel, and so make Himself and His counsel 
open to the commerce of His children. 

The World Not Humbled by God’s Action Upon It.— So far, there- 


186 


MIRACLES. 


fore, from discovering anything undignified or superstitious in 
the admission of a Supernatural agency and government of 
God in the world, it is, in fact, the only worthy and exalted 
conception. It no more humbles the world, or deranges the 
scientific order of it, to let God act upon it, than to let man do 
the same ; as we certainly know that he does, without any 
thought of overturning its laws. On the other hand, to imag- 
ine, in the way of dignifying the world, that God must let it 
alone and simply see it go, is only to confess that it was made 
for no such glorious intent as we have supposed. 

To serve this intent, two things are wanted, and one as truly 
as the other, viz : nature and the supernatural, an invariable, 
scientific order, and a pliant submission of that order to the 
sovereignty and uses of wills, human and divine, without any 
infringement of its constancy. For if nature were to be vio- 
lated and tossed about by capricious overturnings of her laws, 
there would be an end of all confidence and exact intelligence. 
And if it could not be used, or set in new conjunctions by God 
and His children, it would be a wall, a catacomb, and nothing 
more. And yet this latter is the world of scientific natural- 
ism, a world that might well enough answer for the housing of 
manikins, but not for the exercise of living men. It would 
seem to be enough to forever dissipate any such unbelieving 
tendencies, simply to have caught, for once, the difference 
between the constancy of causes separated from uses, and the 
constancy of causes limbered and subjected to the uses of 
eternal freedom and intelligence. That is the world of causa- 
tion, this of religion; that a dumb-bell exercise for arms that 
are dumb-bells themselves ; this is a living order, set in the 
contact and consecrated to the uses of spirit ; that a world as 
being a world; this a grand gymnasium of powers, whom God 
is training for society and commerce with Himself. 

No Divine Agency, No Government. — Furthermore, it is plain, 
that, if there is no supernatural agency of God permissible or 
credible in the world, then there is practically no government 
over it. It makes no difference, touching the point here in 
question, whether we regard nature as being literally a machine, 
wound up to run by its own causes apart from God, or whether 
we regard the causes and laws as being themselves the immedi- 
ate action of God, always present to them and in them. For 
if he is present thus, only as the soul of its causes or the 


MIRACLES. 


187 


will operating in its laws, then that presence, if restricted, as 
naturalism requires, to the mere run of nature, and allowed no 
liberty of help in the disorders of evil, is scarcely better than 
the presence of Ixion at his wheel. If we speak of God, the 
Almighty, He is a being mortgaged for eternity to the round of 
nature ; a grim idol for science to worship, but no Father to 
weakness or Redeemer to faith. 

Or if we imagine that God has so planned the world of nature 
that, running on by its own inherent laws and causes, it will 
always, by a pre-established harmony, bring just the events to 
pass that are wanted; soothe the sorrows, comfort the repent- 
ance, hear the prayers, redress the wrongs, chastise the crimes 
of His subjects ; still it is with our faith practically as if it were 
living in a mill, and not as if it were concerned, hour by hour, 
with living God. God is really not accessible. We have 
access only to the mill we are in with joy to feel it running! 
There is no such reciprocity between us and God as to answer 
the wants of our hearts or the necessities of our moral training. 

Is Nature God’s Monument or Garment?— Besides, if it be main- 
tained that nature is the proper universe of God, and that no 
conception is admissible of powers outside of nature, acting 
upon it, to vary the action, it would otherwise have by itself, 
then follows the very shocking consequence that since the 
creation God has had and can hereafter have no work of liberty 
to do. Nature is His monument, and not His garment. Not 
only are miracles out of the question, but counsel and action, 
also. He is under a scientific embargo, neither hearing nor 
helping His children, nor, indeed, giving any signs of recogni- 
tion. And the reason is worse, if possible, and more chilling 
than the fact, viz : that if He should stir, He would move 
something that science requires to be let alone ! A great many 
Christians are confused and chilled by a difficulty resembled to 
this feeling, when they go to God in worship or prayer, that 
nothing can reasonably be expected of Him, because reason 
allows Him to do nothing. It is as if He were one of those 
spent meteors to which the Indians offer sacrifice, a hard, cold 
rock of iron, which they worship for the noise it made a long 
time ago, when it fell from the sky, and not because it is likely 
ever to make even a noise again. — Bushnell : Nature and Super- 
natural, pp. 255-9. 


188 


MIRACLES. 


Sin More an Interference Than a Miracle.— Consider how near 
the fact of sin, which is the act of a supernatural human 
agency, approaches to the rank of a miracle. Sin, as we have 
shown in a previous chapter, is the acting of a free being as 
he was not made to act ; for, if it were the acting of a being 
under laws of cause and effect established by God, then it would 
be no sin. God made sin possible, just as he made all lying 
wonders possible ; but he never made it a fact, never set any- 
thing in his plan to harmonize with it. Therefore, it enters the 
world as a forbidden fact, against everything that God has 
ordained. And then what follows ? A general disruption of 
everything that belongs to the original paradisaic order of the 
creation. The soul itself begins, at first moment, to feel the 
terrible action of it, and becomes a crazed and disordered 
power. The crystal form of the spirit is broken, and it is 
become an opaque element, a living malformation. The con- 
science is battered and trampled in its throne. The successions 
of the thoughts are become disorderly and wild ; the tempers 
are out of tune ; the passions kindle into guilty fires, and burn 
with a consuming heat; the imagination is a hell of painful, 
ugly phantoms ; the body a diseased thing, scarred by deform- 
ity. Society is out of joint, and even the physical world itself, 
as we have shown, is marred in every part by abortions, deform- 
ities visible, and discords audible, so as no more to represent 
the perfect beauty of its author. What devil, now, of confusion 
has thrown a magnificent creature, and a realm of glorious 
natural order, into so great confusion? Where are those 
sovereign laws of beauty and order which they tell us nothing 
can disturb ? We care not to call sin a miracle. We only say, 
that no one miracle, nor all miracles, ever heard of or reported, 
can be imagined to have wrought a thousandth part of the 
disturbance actually wrought by sin, the sin of mankind. 
Whoever, then, has yielded to the really shallow dogma of 
rationalism, which teaches that cause and effect in nature must 
have their way, fulfilling causes of ideal harmony, and forever 
excluding the possibility of a miracle, need not go far to find 
a corrective. Let it be distinctly noted, then — that what we call 
nature, and what the mere naturalists are so bold to assume, 
cannot be mended or altered by any interference of miracle, 
«does, in fact, no longer exist. 

Sin Has Unmade the Divine Order.— Sin has so far unmade the 


MIRACLES. 


189 > 


world that the Divine order is broken. The laws are all in action, 
as at the first, never discontinued, or annihilated ; but the false 
fact or lying wonder of sin, has made false conjunctions of 
causes, and set the currents of causality in a kind of malign 
activity, which displaces forever the proper order of nature. It 
is with nature as with a watch in which some wheel has been 
made eccentric, in its motions, by abuse. The whole machine is 
in disorder, though no one part is wanting. It is no longer a 
watch, a time-keeper, but a jumble of useless and absurd 
motions. So nature, under sin, is no longer nature, but a con- 
dition of unnature. Yet, this it is, that our scientific naturalism 
assumes to be in perfect order: which not even God may 
touch by a miracle, without a breach of its integrity. It is 
nature, they say, and God, who is the God of nature, will not, 
cannot touch it, without either consenting to its original imper- 
fection, or producing a general wreck of its perfection. Why l 
The perfection of it is gone long ages ago ! From the moment, 
when a substance or power located in it, viz : man, began to 
act as he was not made to act, that is, to sin, it has been a dis- 
ordered fabric of necessity. No longer does it represent only 
the beautiful mind of its author, but quite as often the shame, 
and discord, and deformity consequent upon sin. And no 
man, we are sure, who regards it for a moment, will have any 
the least apprehension that a miracle wrought in it, by its 
author, can be anything but a hopeful sign for its systematic 
integrity. That he would never work a miracle in nature 
proper, as it came from his hands, we are quite willing to 
admit ; but since nature is gone, fallen with man in the bad 
experiment of evil, and since it was originally designed to be 
acted upon, both by man and by Himself, in a process of train- 
ing that carries him through a fall, and brings him out in redemp- 
tion, we see nothing to discourage the faith of miracles, but 
much to prove the contrary. This brings us to speak — 

Miraculous Intervention a Humane Necessity. — Of the fact that 
without a putting forth of the Divine power, in some action 
sovereign as miracle, there can be no reconstruction of the 
proper order of nature, no recovery of the broken state of 
man. The laws of nature, without him and within, are now 
running perversely, as laws of sin and death. The crystalline 
order of souls and of the world is broken, and it is plain, at a 


190 


MIRACLES. 


glance, that no being but God, the Almighty, can avail to 
restore the disturbance. The laws have no power of seltrec- 
tification, any more than the laws of a disordered machine 
have power to cure the disorder by running. As certainly, 
therefore, as sinners are to be restored, as certainly, that is, as 
that all God’s ends in the world and human existence are not 
to fail, there will be, must be, miracles, or puttings forth, at 
least, of a divinely supernatural power. Everything in the 
whole creation is groaning and travailing in expectation of 
so great a redemption. — Bushnell : Nature and Supernatural, pp. 
346-9. 

Christ’s Miracles Superior to Those of Prophets and Apostles.— 

But if the miracles of Jesus be admitted in the block, as by a 
“rational” believer in the resurrection they must be admitted : 
they do point, as I have said, to the catholic belief, as distinct 
from any lower conceptions respecting the person of Jesus 
Christ. They differ from the miracles of prophets and apostles 
in that, instead of being answers to prayer, granted by a higher 
Power, they manifestly flow forth from the majestic life resi- 
dent in the Worker. And, instead Of presenting so many “diffi- 
culties,” which have to be surmounted or set aside, they are in 
entire harmony with that representation of our Savior’s person- 
al glory which is embodied in the creeds. St. John, according- 
ly, calls them Christ’s “works,” meaning that they were just such 
acts as might be expected from Him, being such as He was. 
For, indeed, our Lord’s miracles are not merely evidences that 
he was the organ of a divine revelation. They do not merely 
secure a deferential attention to his disclosures respecting the 
nature of God, the duty and destiny of man, his own person, 
mission and work. Certainly they have this properly eviden- 
tial force. He himself appealed to them as having it. But it 
would be difficult altogether to account for their form, or for 
their varieties, or for the times at which they were wrought, 
or for the motives which were actually assigned for working 
them, on the supposition that their value was only evidential. 
They are like the kind deeds of the wealthy, or the good 
advice of the wise ; they are like that debt of charity which is 
due from the possessors of great endowments to suffering 
humanity. 

Christ as man owed this tribute of mercy which His God- 
head had rendered it possible for Him to pay to those whom 


MIRACLES. 


191 


\ 


He was not ashamed to call His brethren. But, besides this, 
Christ’s miracles are physical and symbolic representations of 
His redemptive action as the Divine Savior of mankind. Their 
form is carefully adapted to express this action. By healing 
the palsied, the blind, the lame, Christ clothed with a visible 
form His plenary power to cure spiritual diseases, such as the 
weakness, the darkness, the deadly torpor of the soul. By 
casting out devils from the possessed, He pointed to His victory 
over the principalities and powers of evil, whereby man would 
be freed from their thraldom and restored to moral liberty. By 
raising Lazarus from the corruption of the grave, He proclaimed 
himself not merely a revealer of the resurrection, but the 
Resurrection and the Life itself. The drift and meaning of 
such a miracle as that in \yhich our Lord’s “Ephphatha” 
brought hearing and speech to the deaf and dumb, is at once 
apparent when we place it in the light of the sacrament of bap- 
tism. The feeding of the five thousand is remarkable as the 
one miracle which is narrated by all the evangelists ; and even 
the least careful among readers of the gospel cannot fail to be 
struck with the solemn actions which precede the wonder- 
work, as well as by the startling magnificence of the result. 
Yet the permanent significance of that extraordinary scene at 
Bethsaida is never really understood, until our Lord’s great 
discourse in the synagogue of Capernaum, which immediately 
follows it, is read as the spiritual exposition of the physical 
miracle, which is thus seen to be a commentary, palpable to 
sense, upon the vital efficacy of the holy communion. 

Something More than Credentials. — In our Lord’s miracles, then, 
we have before us something more than a set of credentials; 
since they manifest forth his mediatorial glory. They exhibit 
various aspects of that redemptive power whereby he designed 
to save lost man from sin and death ; and they lead us to study, 
from many separate points of view, Christ’s majestic Personality, 
as the source of the various wonders which radiate from it. 
And assuredly such a study can have but one result for those 
who honestly believe in the literal reality of the wonders 
described ; it must force upon them a conviction of the Divinity 
of the worker. 

Our Lords Manhood a Miracle. — But the miracles which espe- 
cially point to the catholic (universal) doctrine as their justifi- 


192 


MIRACLES. 


cation, and which are simply incumbrances blocking up the 
way of a humanitarian theorist, are those of which our Lord’s 
Manhood is itself the subject. According to the gospel narra- 
tive, Jesus enters this world by one miracle, and he leaves it 
by another. His human manifestation centers in that miracle 
of miracles, His resurrection from the grave after death. The 
resurrection is the central fact up to which all leads, and from 
which all radiates. Such wonders as Christ’s birth of a virgin 
mother, His resurrection from the tomb, and His ascension into 
heaven, are not merely the credentials of our redemption, they 
are distinct stages and processes of the redemptive work itself. 
Taken in their entirety, they interpose a measureless interval 
between the life of Jesus and the lives of the greatest of 
prophets or of apostles, even of those to whom it was 
given to still the elements and to raise the dead. To 
expel these miracles from the life of Jesus is to destroy 
the identity of the Christ of the Gospels ; it is to substitute 
a new Christ for the Christ of Christendom. Who would 
recognize the true Christ in the natural son of a human 
father or in the crucified prophet whose body has rotted 
in an early grave ? Yet, on the other hand, who will 
not admit that He, who was conceived of the Holy Ghost 
and born of a virgin mother, who, after being crucified, 
dead and buried, rose again the third day from the dead, and 
then went up into heaven before the eyes of his apostles, must 
needs be an altogether superhuman being? The doctrine of 
the Church, then, is at home among the facts of the gospel 
narrative by the mere fact of its proclaiming a superhuman 
Christ, while the modern humanitarian theories are ill at ease 
among those facts. The four evangelists, amid their distin- 
guishing peculiarities, concur in respresenting a Christ whose 
life is encased in a setting of miracles. The doctrine of the 
Church meets these representations more than half way ; they are 
in sympathy with, if they are not admitted to anticipate, its 
assertion. The gospel miracles point, at the very least, to a 
Christ who is altogether above the range of human experience ; 
and the creeds recognize and confirm this indication by saying 
that he is Divine. 

The Christ of Dogma is the Christ of Ilistory.— Thus, the Christ 
of dogma is the Christ of history. He is the Christ of the 
only extant history which describes the Founder of Christen- 


MIRACLES. 


193 


clom at all. He may not be tbe Christ of some modern com- 
mentators upon that history; but these commentators do not 
affect to take the history as it has come down to us. As the 
gospel narratives stand, they present a block of difficulties to 
humanitarian theories ; and these difficulties can only be 
removed by mutilations of the narratives so wholesale and 
radical as to destroy their substantial interest, besides render- 
ing the retention of the fragments which may be retained a 
purely arbitrary procedure. The gospel narratives describe 
the Author of Christianity as the worker and the subject of 
extraordinary miracles ; and these miracles are such as to 
afford a natural lodgment for, nay to demand as their correl- 
ative, the doctrine of the creed. That doctrine must be 
admitted to be, if not the divinely authorized explanation, at 
least the best intellectual conception and resume of the evan- 
gelical history. A man need not be a believer in order to 
admit, that in asserting Christ’s Divinity we make a fair trans- 
lation of the gospel story into the language of abstract thought ; 
and that we have the best key to that story when we see in it 
the doctrine that Christ is God, unfolding itself in a series of 
occurrences, which on any other supposition seem to wear an 
air of nothing less than legendary extravagance. 

Prepossession Against the miraculous. — It may, it probably will, 
be objected tb all this that a large number of men and women 
at the present day are on the one hand strongly prepossessed 
against the credibility of all miracles whatever, while on the 
other they are sincere “ admirers ” of the moral character of 
Jesus Christ. They may not wish explicitly and in terms to 
reject the miraculous history recorded in the gospels ; but still 
less do they desire to commit themselves to an unreserved 
acceptance of it. Whether from indifference to miraculous 
occurrence, or because their judgment is altogether in suspense, 
they would rather keep the preternatural element in our Lord’s 
life out of sight, or shut their eyes to it. But they are open to 
the impressions which may be produced by the spectacle of 
high ethical beauty, if only the character of Christ can be dis- 
entangled from a series of wonders which, as transcending all 
ordinary human experience, do not touch the motives that 
oompel their assent to religious truth. Accordingly, we are 
warned, that if it is not a piece of spiritual thoughtlessness, and 
M 


194 


MIRACLES. 


even cruelty, it is at any rate a rhetorical mistake to insist upon 
a consideration so opposed to the intellectual temper of the 
time. 

This is what may be urged ; but let it be observed, that the 
objector assumes a point which should rather have been proved. 
He assumes the possibility of putting forward an honest picture 
of the life of Jesus, which shall uphold the beauty, and even 
the perfection of his moral character, while denying the histori- 
cal reality of his miracles, or at any rate while ignoring them. 
Whereas, if the only records which we possess of the life of 
Jesus are to be believed at all, they make it certain that Jesus 
Christ did claim to work, and was himself the embodiment, of 
startling miracles. How can this fact be dealt with by a modern 
disbeliever in the miraculous ! Was Christ, then, the ignorant- 
victim and promoter of a crude superstition ! Or was he, as 
M. Renan considers, passive and unresisting, while credited 
with working wonders which he knew to be merely thaumatur- 
gic tricks ! On either supposition, is it possible to uphold Him 
as “the moral ideal of humanity,” or, indeed, as the worthy 
object of any true moral enthusiasm! 

Cannot Strip Jesus of Ilis Miraculous Power. — We cannot decline 
this question. It is forced upon us by the subject-matter. A 
neutral attitude towards the miraculous element in the Gospel 
history is impossible. The claim to work miracles is not the 
least prominent element of our Lord’s teaching ; nor are the 
miracles which are said to have been wrought by Him a fanci- 
ful or ornamental appendage to His action. The miraculous 
is inextricably interwoven with the whole life of Christ. The 
ethical beauty, nay, the moral integrity of our Lord’s character* 
is dependent, whether we will it or not, upon the reality of His 
miracles. It may be very desirable to defer, as far as possible* 
to the mental prepossessions of our time; but it is not practicable 
to put asunder two things which God has joined together* 
namely, the beauty of Christ’s character and the bona fide reality 
of the miracles which He professed to work. * * * * * * 

Historical Spirit vs. Dogmatic Spirit. — It is common with some 
modern writers to represent the questions at issue between 
the Faith and its opponents, in respect of the Person of our 
Lord, as being substantially a question between the “histor- 
ical v spirit and the spirit of dogmatism. The dogmatic temper 


MIRACLES. 


195 


is painted by them as a baseless but still powerful superstition, 
closely pressed by the critical enquiries and negative conclu- 
sions of our day, but culpably shutting its eyes against the 
advancing truth, the power of which nevertheless it cannot but 
instinctively feel, and clinging with the wrong-headed obstinacy 
of despair to the cherished but already condemned formulae 
of its time-honored and worn-out metaphysics. Opposed to 
it, we are told, is the “ historical spirit,” young, vigorous, fear- 
less, truthful, flushed with successes already achieved, assured 
of successes yet to come. The “historical spirit” is thus said 
to represent the cause of an enlightened progress in conflict 
with a stupid and immoral conservatism. The “historical 
spirit ” is described as the love of sheer reality, as the longing 
for hard fact, determined to make away with all “ idols of the 
den,” however ancient, venerated, and influential, in the sphere 
of theology. The “ historical spirit ” accordingly undertakes 
to “disentangle the real Person of Jesus from the metaphysi- 
cal envelope,” within which theory is said to have “ encased ” 
Him. The Christ is to be rescued from that cloud-land of 
abstract and fanciful speculation, to which He is stated to 
have been banished by the patristic and scholastic divines; 
He is to be restored to Christendom in manifest subjection to 
all the actual conditions and laws of human history. “ Look,” 
it is said, “ at that figure of the Christ which you see traced in 
mosaics in the apsis of a Byzantine Church. That counte- 
nance upon which you gaze, with its rigid, unalterable outline, 
with its calm, strong mien of unassailable majesty; that Form 
from which there has been stripped all the historic circum- 
stance of life, all that belongs to the changes and chances of 
our mortal condition. What is it but an artistic equivalent 
and symbol of the catholic dogma? Elevated thus to a world 
of unfading glory, and throned in an imperturbable repose, the 
Byzantine Christos Pantocrator must be viewed as the expres- 
sion of an idea, rather than as the transcript of a fact.” A cer- 
tain interest may be allowed to attach to such a representation, 
from its illustrating a particular stage in the development of 
religious thought. But the “historical spirit” must create 
what it can consider a really “ historical ” Christ who will be to 
the Christ of St. Athanasius and St. John what a Rembrandt 
or a Rubens is to a Giotto or a Cimabue. If the illustration 
be objected to, at any rate, the aim of the so-termed “histori- 
cal” school is sufficient plain. 


196 


MIRACLES. 


Fashioning a New Christ,— It proposes to fashion a Christ who 
is to be jesthetically graceful and majestic, but strictly natural 
and human. This Christ will be emancipated from the band- 
ages which “ supernaturalism has wrapped around the prophet of 
Nazareth.” He will be divorced from any idea of incarnating 
essential Godhead; but, as we are assured, He will still be 
something, aye, more than the Christ of the creed has ever 
been yet to Christendom. He will be at once a living man, and 
the very ideal of humanity; at once a being who obeys the 
invincible laws of nature, like ourselves, yet of moral propor- 
tions so mighty and so unrivalled that his appearance among 
men shall adequately account for the phenomenon, an existing 
and still expanding Church. — Liddon : Divinity of Our Lord , 
pp. 151-61. 

[We do not endorse all the expressions of this very forcible extract. — 
Ed.-] 

Gleanings from the Rationalist’s Exegesis.— I cannot better illus- 
trate the violence done to Scripture by the rationalistic school, 
in reducing all miraculous occurrences to merely natural events, 
than by giving some gleanings from the rationalistic exegesis. 
The bright light shining around the shepherds in the night of 
our Lord’s birth was “probably a meteor,” or perhaps “the rays 
of a lantern that happened to pass by.” The changing of the 
water into wine at Cana was a “harmless wedding joke;” the 
disciples had got the wine beforehand, and the twilight helped to 
deceive the guests. That Christ walked on the lake is simply 
a misapprehension on the part of the reader or expositor ; he 
really walked “on the shores of the lake,” or above it, on “one of 
its high banks.” The stilling of the storm on the lake is resolved 
into the fact that Jesus, through his calm and dignified bearing, 
quieted the frightened disciples, and that by a “happy coinci- 
dence” the raging elements ceased their fury just at the same 
time. The healing of the blind was accomplished by means of 
an “efficacious eyesalve,” which little circumstance was over- 
looked by the wonder-seeking narrator. The direction of 
Christ to the blind man, “Go to the pool of Siloara and wash,” 
refers only to “taking the waters” at some neighboring 
medicinal springs. St. John did not intend this for a miracle at 
all. The great miracle of the loaves and fishes, which mad# 
such an impression upon the people that they said, “Surely, this 
is the prophet which should come into the world” (John vi: 14), 


MIRACLES. 


197 


was accomplished by means of secret stores which were in the 
neighborhood, and through the provisions which the people had 
brought with them, Christ, by his words, producing so great an 
effect upon the more wealthy among the multitude, who were 
well supplied with food, that they forthwith shared their stores 
with the poorer. The daughter of Jairus, the young man of 
Nain, and Lazarus, were raised from a death-like trance. The 
transfiguration of our Savior on the mountain, and his converse 
with Moses and Elias, are equally easy to explain. The disciples 
saw Jesus in a morning mist on the mountain speaking with 
two men, and as the sun broke forth at the moment, they 
thought that Moses and Elias were standing with their Master, 
and that He was shining with celestial light. The struggle in 
Gethsemane is an “unexpected indisposition caused by the 
damp night air of the valley in fact, a sudden cold. The resur- 
rection of Christ is the return to life, not of a dead man, but 
of one who was apparently dead, having been laid in the grave 
swooning from the effects of the crucifixion. The angels in 
the grave were “ the white linen cloths ” which were taken by 
the women for celestial beings. Other angelic appearances 
are reduced to lightnings or storms. Dr. Paulus especially 
makes the lightning u fly in a hundred forked flashes around 
the heads of the Jews without singeing a hair of them.” The 
ascension of our Lord, finally, was merely His disappearance 
in a mountain cloud which happened to come between Him and 
His disciples ; or, according to Bahrdt’s account, Christ disap- 
peared behind a hill, and withdrew into the circle of His more 
intimate disciples, until later on, according to a pre-arranged 
plan, He suddenly appeared from behind a bush to St. Paul on 
his way to Damascus ! ! 

You see that the miracle-fearing rationalists accomplish per- 
fectly miraculous feats by means of exegetical devices. Of 
such interpreters Goethe (in his Eaust) says : 

Slavish fidelity is out of date, 

When exposition fails, interpolate. 

Imposition Rather Than Exposition. — Assuredly such attempts 
are not exposition, but imposition. They need but be men- 
tioned to be condemned by every unprejudiced mind as utterly 
desperate coups de force . The whole method is one of bound- 
less arbitrariness, which turns and twists, clips and maims the 
historical monuments, until they say no more than they are 


198 


MIRACLES. 


wanted to say — that is, nothing supernatural. One does not 
listen to the narrators in order to learn what has taken place, 
but he knows beforehand that events cannot have happened in 
the manner in which they are described. One does not want to 
be taught by them, but rather to teach these simple, supersti- 
tious narrators by taking the bandage from their eyes, and 
showing them what they did and what they did not really see 
and hear. The fruits of this arrogance consist not only in 
boundless caprice, but also in positive vulgarity , which utterly 
disgusts us. The fine-sounding term “ natural explanation 77 
turns to bitter irony when we see that it is most unnatural in 
its efforts to do away with the supernatural. I have already 
pointed out the irrationality of “ rational belief . 77 Here you 
have the clearest proofs of it. * * * * * * 

No Opinions Expressed in the Gospels. — It is supposed that the 
Gospels confound facts and opinions, and that the kernel of 
facts must be extracted from the shell of the narrator’s false 
apprehension. All this is simply an arbitrary supposition, 
proceeding from an aversion to the miraculous. The man who 
reads the gospels in an unprejudiced spirit, will find in them 
nothing but the most simple, artless, and true-hearted colla- 
tion of facts, with scarcely anywhere an opinion of the narra- 
tor about them. Indeed, we may say that there probably never 
were historians who gave so little of their own opinions, in the 
course of their accounts, as the evangelists, and the sacred 
writers in general. Never has any one written in such a terse 
style of pregnant shortness as they. What with others would 
have filled thick volumes, is by them related in a few pages. 
And this could only be accomplished by a plain enumeration of 
facts without many subjective views : a delineation of their 
main features in a few bold strokes. Dr. Paulus need not take 
so much trouble to get at the kernel of the matter ; it stands 
before us clearer, more transparent and unadorned, than was 
ever fact related by any writer. This grand though simple 
style passes by in silence a thousand questions, which our curi- 
osity were fain to ask. “And he entered into a ship ; and he 
saw a man sitting at the receipt of custom ; and the disciples 
of John came unto him . 77 Any unbiased reader will see here 
a simple and often abrupt collation of facts, the chief object 
of which always is to give a short account of the main points, 
a style such as even tax gatherers and fishermen could attain. 


MIEACLES. 


199 


It is only when the reader puts on the erroneous and misleading 
glasses of a determined aversion to the miraculous that he sees 
in the gospel narrative no longer the simple substance of real 
events, but a history overlaid with myths and legends. 

How Shall We Distinguish Between Husk and Kernel 1— And ac- 
cording to what standard are we to distinguish between the 
husk and the kernel of a narrative ? Are we to take for our 
canon the rule that the laws of nature and of general human 
development are the limits of historical possibility and of crit- 
ical allowableness? This is nothing but the principle from 
which proceeds the denial of the miraculous — a principle already 
shown by us to be false. It is merely an extraneous presup- 
position, brought to bear on the investigation of these histori- 
cal records ; an axiom which does not result from them, but 
stands in direct contradiction to them. For by means of it, 
anti-miraculous critics make that appear to be the husk, which, 
in the estimation of the evangelists themselves, is the true kernel 
of the narrative, that is, the miraculous element. This they 
seek to peel off by their criticism, in order that a merely 
natural occurrence may be left as the historical kernel. But 
why does an evangelist relate a miraculous event ? Clearly for 
the sake of the miracle. This is to him the root and center of 
the matter, the important part, for the sake of which the event 
appears to him worthy of commemoration. If this be taken 
away, it is not the husk which has been separated from the 
fruit, but the true kernel which has disappeared, leaving in 
most cases a shell not worth preserving. 

This arbitrary procedure, which acknowledges as historical 
only what does not contradict our anti-miraculous prejudices, 
and throws all else overboard, is evidently not the method of 
objective science, but only that of subjective inclination. As 
against such arbitrariness, Strauss is quite right when he says : 
u Either the gospels are really historical records, and miracles 
cannot be banished from the life of Christ ; or the miraculous 
is incompatible with true history, and then the gospels cannot 
be historical records.”— Lehen Jesus, p. 18. 

Result of Chipping Down the Gospel miracle .— 1 This is true, not 
only of isolated narratives, but of the life of Christ, depicted 
in the gospels, as a whole. Whoever wishes to retain the his- 
torical character of the Gospels cannot cut out the miracles 


i 200 


MIRACLES. 


without losing all. It is labor lost to chip and pare down 
isolated miracles, and to give them a natural instead of a 
supernatural purport. Not merely this or that occurrence , hut 
the whole foundation of the Gospel history , that is , the person of 
Christ itself is intrinsically miraculous from beginning to end . 

His words and deeds are likewise miraculous ; so, too, is that 
in Him which rationalists acknowledge as historical : for His 
is a more than human development, inexplicable without the 
influence of supernatural powers and revelations. In short, 
the miraculous is not a mere outward appendage, which as 
such might be separated from the gospel history ; on the con- 
trary, it is the indispensable basis on which the latter rests, 
and one of its most essential elements. We should, therefore, 
gain nothing, even did we succeed in a natural explanation of # 
all the individual miracles, and the whole rationalistic under- 
taking — apart from the falsity of its anti- miraculous basis — 
cannot lead to any real results. For what use is it to prune 
away the miraculous from the twigs and branches, if the whole 
tree be supernatural*? 

An Honest, though Unfortunate, Conclusion.— If the miraculous 
be once denied, it is far more logical and honest no longer to 
regard the gospels as historical ; but, as Strauss does, to con- 
sider them a chain of legends and fictions, and then to abjure 
Christianity openly — for the elimination of the miraculous 
element from the gospel history can never take place without 
a deeply penetrating injury, or even a total and destructive 
alteration of the entire substance of the Christian religion. 

What good is it for us to know all about the linen of the swad- 
dling clothes which the rationalistic exegete will describe so 
learnedly and vividly, if it is no longer a divine Child that was 
wrapped in them? What is the use of depicting to us the 
cross, if it is merely an apparently dead man who is being 
lifted down from it: or of describing the grave, if the Prince 
of Life do not come forth from it ? The whole foundation of 
our Christian life is shattered. 

Take away the miraculous element from the Gospels, and 
what remains ? The threadbare story of a wise and virtuous 
Rabbi, who preached pure morality, and having resolved to 
make his appearance as the Messiah, managed, by the help of a 
natural power of healing, which he employed with good luck, 
to persuade a small portion of the people that he was such. 


MIRACLES. 


201 


He would appear to have been persecuted by the Pharisees 
because he chastised their hypocrisy, and finally to have suf- 
fered death — that is to say, apparent death, from which, after a 
swoon of many hours on the cross, he recovered; “only dar- 
ing, however, to show himself to a few, and afterwards, in all 
probability, slowly languishing away in some remote part of 
Galilee from the effects of his sufferings. * * * * What'a 
miracle do anti-miraculous critics expect us to believe ! Nay, 
more than a miracle, an utter absurdity ! — Theodore Christlieb : 
Modern Doubt and Christian Belief, pp. 346-52. 

Oracular Assertions Out of Place. — This is an historical ques- 
tion. . It is high time that oracular assertions of the impossi- 
bility of such exertions of power as the New Testament attri- 
butes to Christ, or of the imposibility of proving them under 
any circumstances, should be set aside. It is impertinent, 
on the ground of some metaphysical scheme, an a priori 
conception of the universe, to set these arbitrary limits to the 
power of spirit over nature. If a system of philosophy cannot 
find room for facts well attested by historical evidence, so 
much the worse for the philosophical system. The procedure 
of the recent writers upon the Life of Jesus, in the treatment 
of the accounts of miracles in the Gospels, is commonly 
determined by their subjective conclusions or conjectures as 
to the control which may conceivably be exercised by will over 
matter. One will allow the historical verity of the cure of 
the demoniacs, on the ground that such an influence on the 
part of Jesus is thought to be psychologically explicable, with- 
out departing, so very widely from our ordinary experience. 
Another, like Strauss, would draw a line between the lighter 
and more manageable cases of demoniacal frenzy, which are 
allowed to have been subject to the control of Jesus, and the 
more aggravated forms of mental and physical disorder which 
were ascribed, truly, or not, to diabolical possession. A 
large class of writers find no difficulty in accepting the 
narratives of healing said to have been effected by Jesus. 
They can imagine him to have been possessed of an extraor- 
dinary, exceptional power over the diseased, enabling him to 
subdue these maladies. But when it comes to the exercise of 
a control over inanimate nature, as in stilling the waves, or 
multiplying the loaves, they draw back with unbelief. But 
these seemingly highest exertions of miraculous power rest, as 


202 


MIRACLES. 


these writers are obliged to allow, upon the same historical 
attestation as the miraculous events to which they are willing 
to give credence. They are found recorded in what these 
writers are fully persuaded is the oldest part of the evan- 
gelical literature, the Gospel of Mark. It is not on historical 
grounds, but from considerations drawn from a quarter out- 
side of historical study, that this arbitrary line of demarcation 
between the greater and the less, where all exceeds the 
measure of every-day experience, is drawn. 

What a Sound Historical Discernment Concludes. — We say that a 
sound historical discernment, founded on a critical study of 
the documentary proof, must conclude that from the baptism 
of Jesus, He manifested the power to work miracles such as the 
Evangelists record. Nothing of the kind is attributed to him 
before that epoch, when His public ministry began. Exagge- 
rated views are often presented in regard to the credulity of 
the Jews at that time. They did, indeed, believe that God 
might send back to the world John the Baptist, or one of the 
older prophets. But that they attributed miracles to every 
one revered for his sanctity is false, as the example of John the 
Baptist, of whom no miracles are recorded, decisively proves. 
And that miraculous works were not supposed to be of com- 
mon occurrence, or easy to be wrought, is demonstrated by the 
astonishment which everywhere in the narratives is shown to 
have been the effect of the miracles of Jesus. — Prof. G. P . 
Fisher : Beginnings of Christianity, pp. 462-3. 

Froude Refutes Renan. — M. Ernest Renan has recently pro- 
duced an account of the Gospel story which, written as it is by 
a man of piety, intellect and imagination, is spreading rapidly 
through the educated world. Carrying out the principles with 
which Protestants have swept modern history clear of mira- 
cles to their natural conclusions, he dismisses all that is miracu- 
lous from the life of our Lord, and endeavors to reproduce the 
original Galilean youth who lived, and taught, and died in 
Palestine eighteen hundred years ago. We have no inten- 
tion of reviewing M. Renan. He will be read soon enough by 
many who would better consider their peace of mind by leav- 
ing him alone. Eor ourselves, we are unable to see by what 
right, if he rejects the miraculous part of the narrative, he 
retains the rest ; the imagination and the credulity which invent 


MIRACLES. 


203 


extraordinary incidents, invent ordinary incidents also : and if 
the divine element in the life is legendary, the human may be 
legendary also . — James Anthony Froude : Short Studies. Vol. 1. 
p. 189. 

Miracles Contrasted with Witchcraft, Sorcery, Divination, Etc. — 

The material inquiry is, What stronger historical evidence is 
there of the truth of the miracles of the Bible than of the alleged 
facts respecting witchcraft, sorcery, divination, and necromancy; 
the alleged marvels in the early history of the world — as the pro- 
digies which, according to Livy, attended the founding of Borne ; 
the alleged miracles in the Christian Church after the death of 
the apostles ; and the alleged miracles of the mediaeval ages, and 
of the Catholic Church in modern times ? May not the same 
process of explanation by which the world has been disabused 
of faith in these things be legitimately applied to the Bible ? 
Skeptics and Bationalists claim that it may be so, and should be 
so ; the existence of the Christian religion in the world depends 
on making out the contrary. 

The proper points of inquiry, therefore, in the solution of 
the question, would be, 

I. The causes which have led to the change in the opinions 
of the world in regard to the marvelous ; and, 

II. The question whether the miracles of the Bible cannot 
be explained in the same manner, and whether they may not 
also take their place with the illusions and deceptions of former 
ages. 

These inquiries manifestly cover the whole ground. 

I. The causes which have led to these changes in the opin- 
ions of the world in regard to the marvelous. 

Those causes are now well understood, and may be referred 
to in few words. 

(1.) The reduction of events which were supposed to be 
supernatural to the operation of natural laws. In this solu- 
tion the facts are, of course, admitted, and the effects produced 
by those facts on the minds of men are admitted also. The 
explanation is sought in laws that are now well understood, 
and that imply nothing that is supernatural. Thus, as I have 
before remarked, eclipses, comets, meteors, that were regarded 
as marvelous and supernatural in the early periods of the 
world, indicating by their appearing the pleasure or the dis* 
pleasure, the favor or the wrath of the gods, or heralding 


204 


MIRACLES. 


important events, are now reduced to laws that are as regular 
and as well understood as the ordinary laws of nature, and 
excite no more alarm or apprehension than the rising or the 
setting of the sun and the stars. 

Very many things are thus withdrawn from the region of the 
marvelous, and now take their places in the ordinary course of 
events. The world no longer believes that the harvest-fields 
are under the control of Ceres ; that Neptune rules on the sea 5 
that iEolus controls the winds ; that Dryads and Fawns preside 
in the groves ; or that the healing properties of medicine are to 
be traced to the god Aesculapius — and the woods, and the groves, 
and the lakes are deserted ; the temples of Ceres, and Neptune, 
and Bacchus, and ACsculapius are no longer crowded by worship- 
ers, and more substantial and permanent honors are rendered to 
scientific men who have discovered the laws by which the 
phenomena are explained than were rendered to the imaginary 
divinities. 

Science, then, just in proportion as it has made progress 
in the world, has contributed to this change of opinion ; has 
relieved the world of the fears attendant on superstition ; and 
has contributed, if not always to the introduction and establish- 
of true religion, at least to the removal of superstition and 
idolatry. The mythology of Greece can never be restored ; the 
Parthenon can never be rebuilt ; the Pantheon can never be 
again a temple for heathen gods and heathen worship. 

(2) The progress of civilization may be referred to as a sec- 
ond cause of this change. This, indeed, would include, in 
some measure, that which has above been adverted to, the 
progress of science, for that enters, of course, largely into the 
progress of civilization. The point to be now adverted to is 
that which has been dwelt upon so much by Lecky, and which 
springs from the nature of the case, that, up to a certain period 
at least, in proportion as society advances in civilization, the 
belief in the marvelous disappears, and that the very progress 
of civilization tends to prepare the minds of men to disbelieve 
in the supernatural altogether, or leads to Rationalism— to 
Rationalism in a proper use of that word ; to “ Rationalism,” 
in fact, in the sense in which that word is commonly employed. 

And yet, with all the concessions which should be made on 
that point, it would be a fair inquiry how far the mere progress 
of civilization would, in fact, conduct the human mind, or 


MIRACLES. 


205 


what, in this respect, would be its legitimate influence on the 
world. It could not fail to be noticed in such an inquiry that 
mere civilization has never destroyed the love of the marvel- 
ous and the belief in the supernatural ; that the belief of the 
marvelous and the supernatural prevailed under the highest 
forms of civilization in Greece and Borne ; that it prevails in 
the most civilized nations of the world at this day ; and that, if 
one form of belief in the supernatural is banished to any 
extent from the minds of men by an advanced civilization, 
another form may take its place not more reconcilable with 
the sober and chastened laws of science. It cannot be 
forgotten that in this age — an age which we regard as more 
civilized than any past period, certainly as more civilized than 
the ages in which a belief in necromancy, divination and witch- 
craft prevailed, and, in the apprehension of many in this age, 
more civilized and advanced than the ages when there was a 
general faith in miracles, there is a wide-spread belief in mes- 
merism, in spirit-rapping, in table-turning, and in u spiritualism” 
— in actual converse with, and communication with, the spirits 
of departed men, and that this belief is by no means confined 
to those who lay no claims to a refined civilization, or who are 
of the most humble walks of life. Scientific men; literary 
men of no mean name — judges, physicians, lawyers, and u phi- 
losophers,” are found in the class of those who believe in these 
marvels; and perhaps the very home of this faith may be 
found in the most enlightened cities of our own country, in 
the very vicinity of the most celebrated seats of learning, or 
in the most refined walks of life. Yet, while these things are 
so, it cannot be doubted that the advancing civilization of the 
world has had an important influence in narrowing the circle of 
the supernatural and the marvelous, nor that there is a tenden- 
cy in such civilization to suggest the inquiry whether a perfect 
civilization would not remove all traces of the miraculous and 
the marvelous from the world. 

(3.) In connection with this, it is to be observed that there 
has been a course of events in the world that has tended to 
disabuse mankind of unfounded claims to a favored and pecu- 
liar acquaintance with the secrets of nature, to a compact with 
powerful spiritual beings, to intercourse with the spirits of the 
departed, and to the special favor of God bestowed on those 
who were supposed to be remarkable for their piety — the 


206 


MIRACLES. 


u saints, ^ and this fact has silently and imperceptibly operated 
to lead men to doubt the reality of any direct divine interposi- 
tion in human affairs. 

(a.) The change in the world on the subject of witchcraft has 
tended to produce this. Formerly the belief in witchcraft was 
not les universal than the belief in miracles, and the belief was 
sustained by what was regarded as the highest possible evi- 
dence. Faith in that has, to a great extent, passed away, and 
the question which men now ask is whether the belief in mira- 
cles is any better sustained. 

Belief in Magic, Necromancy, Catholic Miracles, Passed Away.— 

( b .) The belief in magic was once as universal as the belief in 
miracles, and the facts were supposed to be sustained by irre- 
fragable evidence. That belief has also passed away. It has 
been removed partly by the application of science to the real 
explanation of the facts, and partly by the knowledge that the 
alleged facts were merely the results of cunning and imposture, 
and men, in like manner, ask the question whether the same 
solution is not to be applied to the whole subject of miracles. 

(c.) Faith in necromancy, sorcery and divination has passed 
away. The world has come to believe that all the facts that 
were connected with such claims are to be traced to a halluci- 
nation of the mind, or to well-executed imposture, and they ask 
whether the same solution may not be applied to all pretended 
miracles. 

(d.) The faith of the world in regard to the reappearance of 
the dead, and to the visitation of the gods to earth, has 
passed away, and men have learned to ask whether the same 
result is not to follow in regard to all the divine manifestations 
to our world, and to the alleged resurrection of Lazarus and 
of Christ. 

(< e .) The belief in the early miracles of the Christian Church 
subsequently to the time of the apostles has passed away, and 
men have learned to ask significantly what should make a dif- 
ference between those miracles and the miracles of the New 
Testament. 

(/.) Faith in the miracles of the Roman Catholic Church exists 
nowhere outside of that communion, and to a very limited 
extent, apart from the priesthood, within, and the world is begin- 
ning to ask why the miracles of the Bible should not share the 
same fate. 


MIRACLES. 


207 


Those who defend the miracles of the Bible, it is said, admit 
the fact that the pretended miracles of the Egyptians in the 
time of Moses were false; that the miracles of the early 
Christian Church were false ; that the miracles of the Catholic 
Church are false — that, in fact, men have often been imposed 
upon in the belief of such wonders, and they ask why should 
not the principles which they apply so unsparingly to these pre- 
tended wonders be applied to all claims of miraculous powers. 

(g.) There has been, at the same time, a vast decline of priest- 
ly power and influence tending to the same result. The world 
has come to believe that alike among the heathen, and in the early 
Christian Church, and in the Koman Catholic communion, the 
belief in miracles has been kept up, in a good measure, by the 
influence and the arts of the priesthood. Outside of the 
Catholic Church that belief is now universal in regard to the 
pretended miracles in that Church, and the belief that the credit 
of the miracles in the early Church was to be traced to priestly 
power has become nearly universal. 

Priestly power, as such, is fast dying away in the world— alike 
among the heathen, in the Eoman Catholic portion of the world, 
in the Greek Church, and in the Protestant world. In propor- 
tion as science advances, and the world becomes acquainted 
with the arts which have so often characterized the priesthood 
of all religions, the mere power of a priesthood as such dies 
away. The power of influencing men by forms and ceremonies ; 
by processions and benedictions ; by splendid vestments and 
pomp ; by the belief that truth flows only from the lips of an 
anointed priesthood and grace from their hands, dies out among 
men, and they are led to ask, since so much of religion has 
undeniably owed its power to the unfounded claims of a 
priesthood , whether the whole of it cannot be resolved into 
such a belief. 

Perhaps the present state of the world on this subject, as 
indicating an existing state of mind , cannot be better described 
than in the following passage from the writer to whom I have 
so often referred : 

« Generation after generation the province of the miraculous 
has contracted, and the circle of skepticism has expanded. Of 
the two great divisions of these events, one has compeletely 
perished. Witchcraft, and diabolical possession, and diabolical 
disease have long since passed into the region of fables. To 


208 


MIRACLES. 


disbelieve them was at first the eccentricity of a few isolated 
thinkers ; it was then the distinction of the educated classes in 
the most advanced nations ; it is now the common sentiment of 
all classes in all countries in Europe. The countless miracles 
that were once associated with every holy relic and with every 
village shrine have rapidly and silently disappeared. Year by 
year the incredulity became more manifest, even when the 
theological profession was unchanged. Their numbers con- 
tinually lessened, until they at last almost ceased, and any 
attempt to revive them has been treated with a general and 
undisguised contempt. The miracles of the fathers are passed 
over with an incredulous scorn or with a significant silence. 
The rationalistic spirit has even attempted to explain away 
those which are recorded in Scripture, and it has materially 
altered their position in the systems of theology. In all 
countries, in all churches, in all parties, among men of every 
variety of character and opinion, we have found the tendency 
existing. In each nation its development has been a measure 
of intellectual activity, and has passed in regular course 
through the different strata of society. During the last century 
it has advanced with a vastly accelerated rapidity ; the old lines 
of demarkation have been everywhere obscured, and the 
spirit of Rationalism has become the great center to which the 
intellect of Europe is manifestly tending. If we trace the 
progress of the movement from its origin to the present day, 
we find that it has completely altered the whole aspect and 
complexion of religion. When it began, Christianity was 
regarded as a system entirely beyond the range and scope of 
human reason ; it was impious to question ; it was impious to 
examine ; it was impious to discriminate. On the other hand, 
it was visibly instinct with the supernatural. Miracles of every 
order and degree of magnitude were flashing forth incessantly 
from all its parts. They excited no skepticism and no surprise. 
The miraculous element pervaded all literature, explained all 
dificulties, consecrated all doctrines. Every unusual phenome- 
non was immediately referred to a supernatural agency, not 
because there was a passion for the improbable, but because 
such an explanation seemed far more simple and easy of belief 
than the obscure theories of science. 

“In the present day, Christianity is regarded as a system 
which courts the strictest investigation, and which, among 


1 


MIRACLES. 209 

many other functions, was designed to vivify and stimulate all 
the energies of man. The idea of the miraculous, which a 
superficial observer might have once deemed its most promi- 
nent characteristic, has been driven from almost all its intrench- 
ments, and now quivers faintly and feebly through the mists of 
eighteen hundred years.” * 

II. Such, then, being the facts in regard to the change of belief 
in the world on the subject of the marvelous and the supernatu- 
ral, and such being the causes by which this change is to be ex- 
plained, the inquiry meets us whether the miracles of the Bible 
cannot be explained in the same manner, and whether they may 
not in like manner take their place with the illusions and de- 
ceptions of former ages. It is clear that if they can thus be 
explained, and if there is no stronger historical evidence in 
their favor than could be adduced for those things which have 
been referred to, they will soon, in the estimation of mankind, 
take the same place, and faith in the supernatural will wholly 
cease among men. Whether they can thus be explained is the 
point now to be considered. If they can not thus be explained, 
then the evidence commonly relied on for their support will be 
unaffected by the changes which have occurred on other sub- 
jects, and will remain in all the force attached to undisputed 
evidence on other well-attested historical facts in the past. 

(1.) The miracles of the Bible cannot be explained by the 
operation of natural laws, or, in other words, cannot be brought 
within the range of natural laws. I mean by this, that, if the 
facts are admitted, there are no powers of nature known to 
man that would explain or account for them; that is, they could 
not be arranged and classified under any of the natural sciences. 
If Lazarus was raised from the grave ; if Christ rose from the 
dead ; if the blind were restored to sight by a word or a touch, 
there are no laws of science— chemistry, natural philosophy, 
galvanism, electricity, or magnetism to which such facts can be 
shown to belong ; there is no power in connection with those 
sciences to produce such effects now; there are no principles 
suggested by those sciences which will explain them. 

On this point I made the following remarks in the Lecture 
on Miracles, which it seems necessary to repeat here, in order 
that a connected view may be taken of the subject: 

*Lecky: History of Rationalism, Vol. i, pp. 194-95. 

N 


210 


MIRACLES. 


Science lias not advanced so far as to explain the miracles of 
the New Testament on any known principles, as it has in these 
matters, nor has it made any approximation to it. Nay, just so 
far as it has gone it has demonstrated that those miracles can- 
not be explained on any principles known, or likely to be 
known, to science — gravitation, attraction, repulsion, electricity, 
galvanism, or the healing properties of vegetables or minerals. 
The chemist does not open the eyes of the blind by a touch; he 
does not heal the sick by a word; he does not raise the dead 
by the blow-pipe or by galvanism. In the language of Mr- 
Mansel, “The advance of physical science tends to strengthen 
rather than weaken our conviction of the supernatural charac- 
ter of the Christian miracles. In whatever proportion our 
knowledge of physical causation is limited, and the number Of 
unknown natural agents comparatively large, in the same 
proportion is the probability that some of these unknown 
causes, acting in some unknown manner, may have given rise 
to the alleged marvels. But this probability diminishes when 
each newly-discovered agent, as its properties become known, is 
shown to be inadequate to the production of the supposed effects, 
and as the residue of unknown causes, which might produce 
them, becomes smaller and smaller. We are told, indeed, that 
the 1 inevitable progress of research must, within a longer or 
shorter period, unravel all that seems most marvelous ; ? * but 
we may be permitted to doubt the relevancy of the remark to 
the present case, until it has been shown that the advance of 
science has in some degree enabled men to perform the miracles 
performed by Christ. When the inevitable progress of research 
shall have enabled men of modern times to give sight to the 
blind with a touch, to still tempests with a word, to raise the 
dead to life, to die themselves, and to rise again, we may allow 
that the same causes might possibly have been called into 
operation ten thousand years earlier by some great man in 
advance of his age. But, until this is done, the unraveling of 
the marvelous in other phenomena only serves to leave these 
works in their solitary grandeur, as wrought by the linger of 
God, unapproached and unapproachable by all the knowledge 
and all the power of man. The appearance of a comet or the 
fall of an aerolite may be reduced by the advance of science 
from a supposed supernatural to a natural occurrence, and this 


*Essays and Reviews, p. 109. 


MIRACLES. 


211 


reduction furnishes a reasonable presumption that other 
phenomena of a like character will in time meet with a like 
explanation. But the reverse is the case with respect to those 
phenomena which are narrated as produced by personal agency . 
In proportion as the science of to-day surpasses that of former 
generations, so is the improbability that any man could have 
done in past times, by natural means, works which no skill of 
the present age is able to imitate.” * 

Were the Apostles in Advance of Their Age.— In addition to these 
observations, I would now, for further illustration of the sub- 
ject, make the following remarks : 

(a.) If the miracles of the New Testament were in themselves 
susceptible of explanation in this manner, it is plain that the 
authors of the Bible, or those who wrought the miracles, were 
not, in fact, so far in advance of their own age, or that they had 
no such knowledge of scientific principles — of the laws of 
nature — as to enable them to make use of this knowledge in 
working the alleged miracles. There were events in the Middle 
Ages, in connection with “magic,” which seemed to the masses oi 
men to be miracles ; which surpassed all their power of pro- 
ducing or comprehending them-; and which conveyed, designed- 
ly or undesignedly, to the multitudes the impression that those 
who wrought them were in league with higher intelligences, or 
were endowed with supernatural powers. Those events are 
now susceptible of an easy and natural explanation, as has been 
shown amply by Sir David Brewster in his work on “Magic.” 
Boger Bacon, for example, was so far in advance of his age in 
the sciences, that, on the ground of this, he might readily have 
obtained a reputation for being able to work miracles ; and if 
we were to suppose that Boger Bacon, or any of his contempo- 
raries, had the knowledge which is now possessed by those 
skilled in chemistry ; or could have exhibited the wonderful and 
sudden transformations of matter now exhibited in the labo- 
ratory of the chemist ; or that they had the power of multiply- 
ing copies of books, with the strictest exactness, almost in an 
instant ; or that they could have multiplied accurate impressions 
of the human countenance, or of hills, and vales, and trees, 
and animals, by the action of light ; or that they could have 
transmitted thought and language in a moment over hills and 


*Aids to Faith, pp. 21-22. 


212 


MIRACLES. 


vales, across rivers and along the beds of oceans, it would have 
been easy for such men to have established the reputation of 
being workers of miracles. But, apart from all other consider- 
ations, now, the authors of the Bible had no such pretensions to 
knowledge in advance of their age. They were not in a land 
distinguished for science. They had received no scientific edu- 
cation. They had, so far as appears, no scientific genius. They 
had nothing which constitutes the “apparatus” of science now. 
All accounts agree in the fact that they were plain, unlettered 
men ; nor does anything which they ever said, or wrote, or did, 
indicate that they had any acquaintance whatever with even 
the very lowest rudiments of scientific knowledge. 

(b.) The principles of science cannot be so applied as to 
explain the miracles of the New Testament. Science makes 
no approximation to an explanation. 

This remark is specially true in regard to the resurrection of 
the dead, and is of special importance, because a single case of 
restoration to life settles the whole question. If Lazarus was 
raised from the dead, the Christian religion is from God. 
Science has settled the principle so that it is now an admitted 
axiom among all scientific meu that the production of life 
is beyond the power of mere science. Whatever life may be, 
and whether it will ever be true that men will be able to 
explain and define what it is , it is reduced to a certainty that 
men, by the application of scientific principles, cannot produce 
it. No approximation has been made to the power of causing 
it to exist where there has not been a germ or an ovum, or 
where it does not already exist, though suspended. Animal- 
cules that seemed to have been dead for ages, and that 
may be dried and pounded, may be made to revive by the 
application of moisture; a grain of wheat that may have been 
hidden in the folds of an Egyptian mummy for three thousand 
years may be made to grow; but no power of man can orig- 
inate life ; none can cause it to exist again when it has become 
extinct. Until that is done, it may be regarded as settled that the 
miracles of the New Testament cannot be explained by the appli- 
cation of the principles of science. If such a thing is claimed 
as possible, we may at least demand that the same thing should 
be done now by scientific men : for assuredly it cannot be pre- 
tended that in true scientific knowledge the apostles were supe- 
rior to the scientific men of this generation. If, therefore, it 


MIRACLES. 


213 


could be shown, as Benan supposed, that the healing of Peter’s 
wife’s mother could be explained by some power of mesmer- 
ism, yet we have a right, in order to set aside the evidence for 
the miracles of the New Testament, to demand that there shall 
be some unmistakable act of raising up the dead — where there 
is no doubt of the death — as in the case of Lazarus and the 
Savior ; and, to make the argument complete, that it shall 
be done by a word — by some command which the scientific 
man has over the dead, and the grave, and the invisible world. 
As it is certain that men have never done this, and as it is certain 
that the scientific men of this age, or of future ages, will not even 
attempt this, it may be regarded as settled that the miracles of 
the New Testament cannot be explained by the application of 
any principles of science, or cannot be brought under the 
range of natural laws. 

Miracles of Bible Not Disposed of Like Withcraft, Necromancy, 
etc. — (2.) The miracles of the Bible cannot be disposed of in the 
way in whifch the belief in witchcraft, necromancy and sorcery 
has been. The explanation which has been applied to these 
things, and which has so entirely modified or revolutionized 
the faith of mankind on these subjects, cannot be applied to 
the miracles of the Bible. In other words, we cannot take the 
explanations ; the course of reasoning ; the changes produced 
by civilization, and the results of calm and sober thinking on 
these subjects, by which so material a change has been pro- 
duced in the faith of mankind in regard to these matters, and 
by the application of the same process, reach the same results 
in respect to the miracles of the Bible. 

This is a very material point in the argument ; for if the 
reasoning which has changed the faith of the world in regard 
to the marvelous and the supernatural on these subjects is of 
sufficient force to change the faith of the world in all that is 
supernatural, including the miracles of the Bible as well as 
other things, then it is manifest that faith in miracles will soon 
occupy the same place as faith in witchcraft, and necromancy, 
and sorcery ; and as it is now certain that the faith in witch- 
craft, necromancy and sorcery, which was once held in the 
world, cannot be restored in the present state of civilization, 
and still less under the advanced civilization to which the 
world is tending, so, if the arguments and explanations which 
have banished the belief in witchcraft from the world, can be 


214 


MIRACLES. 


legitimately applied to the miracles of the Bible, it will follow 
that the world is tending rapidly and inevitably to the highest 
point of Rationalism, where all faith in the supernatural and 
the marvelous shall cease among men. That this result is 
desired by many there can be no doubt; that it is secretly 
believed by many that it will be so there can be as little doubt; 
and that the tendency of the statements of the causes which 
have led to the changes in the opinions of the world on these 
subjects, as they are found in the histories of Rationalism, is 
to lead to the apprehension that this will be so, there can be as 
little doubt. No man can rise up from a history of Rational- 
ism, and of the changes which have occurred in regard to the 
belief of mankind in the marvelous, without asking the ques- 
tion whether the legitimate result of all this is not to remove 
all faith in the marvelous and the supernatural from the minds 
of men. 

What, then, is witchcraft? What is sorcery, divination, 
necromancy? By what means has the faith of mankind 
in these things been shaken? Are the same processes of 
unbelief applicable to the miracles of the Bible ? 

Witchcraft, divination, sorcery, necromancy, though they 
differ specifically from each other, yet so far partake of the same 
general nature that they can be grouped together, and they so 
far resemble each other, and so far depend on the same things, 
that the same explanation in regard to their origin, their pre- 
valence, and their removal from the faith of mankind, will be 
found applicable to them all. It would be impossible that one 
should retain its hold on the faith of mankind if all the others, 
or any of the others, should be proved to be a delusion and an 
imposture. The question is whether the miracles of the Bible 
will share the same destiny. 

I have stated the difficulty on this subject in the Lecture on 
Miracles (pp. 161-65), and perhaps so stated it as to have led to 
the inquiry — perhaps a painful inquiry — on the minds of some, 
whether all that is said there might not also be said about 
miracles. As there can be no desire of concealment in a 
candid inquiry after truth on any subject, and as it is important 
to have the difficulty fairly before the mind, I shall copy here 
what was said on the subject in the Lecture. 

Is There any Stronger Evidence for Miracles Than for Witch- 
craft 1 — A more material and important question still is, Whether 


MIRACLES. 


215 


there is any stronger evidence in favor of miracles than there 
is in favor of witchcraft, of sorcery, of the reappearance of the 
dead, of ghosts, of apparitions ? Is not the evidence in favor 
of these as strong as any that can be adduced in favor of 
miracles? Have not these things been matters of universal 
belief? In what respects is the evidence in favor of the miracles 
of the Bible stronger than that which can be adduced in favor 
of witchcraft and sorcery? Does it differ m nature and in 
degree ; and if it differs, is it not in favor of witchcraft and 
sorcery ? Has not the evidence in favor of the latter been 
derived from as competent and credible witnesses ? Has it 
not been brought to us from those who saw the facts alleged ? 
Has it not been subjected to a close scrutiny in courts of 
justice — to cross-examinations — to tortures? Has it not con- 
vinced those of highest legal attainments ; those accustomed 
to sift testimony ; those who understood the true principles of 
evidence? Has not the evidence in favor of witchcraft and 
sorcery had, what the evidence in favor of miracles has not had, 
the advantage of strict judicial investigation, and been sub- 
jected to trial, where evidence should be, before courts of 
law? Have not the most eminent judges in the most civilized 
and enlightened courts of Europe and America admitted the 
force of such evidence, and on the ground of it committed 
great numbers of innocent persons to the gallows or to the 
stake ? 

An extract or two from Lecky, in his history of Rationalism 
in Europe, will show the nature of the difficulty and the force 
of the objection, though the remarks made by him are in no 
way designed to support the cause of infidelity : “For more 
than fifteen hundred years it was universally believed that the 
Bible established, in the clearest manner, the reality of the crime 
[of witchcraft], and that an amount of evidence, so varied and 
so ample as to preclude the very possibility of doubt, attested 
its continuance and its prevalence. The clergy denounced it 
with all the emphasis of authority. The legislators of almost 
-every land enacted laws for its punishment. Acute judges, 
whose lives were spent in sifting evidence, investigated the 
question on countless occasions, and condemned the accused. 
Tens of thousands of victims perished by the most agonizing 
and protracted torments without exciting the faintest compas- 
sion. Nations that were completely separated by position, by 
interests, and by character, on this one question were united.” 


216 


MIRACLES. 


The writer from whom I have made this extract adds : “ It is, 
I think, difficult to examine the subject with impartiality, with- 
out coming to the conclusion that the historical evidence 
establishing the reality of witchcraft is so vast and so varied 
that it is impossible to disbelieve it without what on other sub- 
jects we should deem the most extraordinary rashness. The 
defenders of the belief, who were often men of great and dis- 
tinguished talent, maintained that there was no fact in all 
history more fully attested, and that to reject it would be to 
strike at the root of all historical evidence of the miraculous. 
The subject was examined in tens of thousands of cases, in 
almost every country of Europe, by tribunals which included 
the acutest lawyers and ecclesiastics of the age on the scene 
at the time when the alleged facts had taken place, and with the 
assistance of innumerable sworn witnesses. The judges had 
no motive whatever to desire the condemnation of the accused ; 
and as conviction would be followed by a fearful death, they 
had the strongest motives to exercise their power with caution 
and deliberation. In our day it may be said with confidence 
that it would be altogether impossible for such an amount of 
evidence to accumulate round a conception which had no basis 
in fact. If we considered witchcraft probable, a hundredth 
part of the evidence we possess would have placed it beyond 
the region of doubt. If it were a natural, but a very improbable, 
fact, our reluctance to believe it would have been completely 
stifled by the multiplicity of the proofs.”* 

What Witchcraft, Necromancy, etc., Depend On. — In reference to 
this point, I now submit the following remarks : 

(a.) Witchcraft, sorcery, divination, necromancy, all depend 
essentially on one idea — the idea of a compact with created 
spirits ; not with God. The idea is always that of a compact, of 
an understanding, or of an alliance for certain purposes, and 
the accomplishing of certain things to which the unaided human 
powers are inadequate, but which may be quite within the 
range of the power of such invisible beings. Thus, in necro- 
mancy, the foundation of all that is implied in it is a desire — 
that desire so natural to man — to penetrate the future. The 
knowledge necessary for this purpose is not in the power of 

*See Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe, vol. 1, pp. 28, 34, 36 
37, 38, 39. 


MIRACLES. 


217 


the most gifted man among the living, but it is supposed that 
it must be in the possession of the dead — of those who now 
reside in the invisible world, and that a compact may be made 
with them by which that knowledge may be imparted to those 
who are parties in the agreement. Thus, also, in divination, the 
idea is essentially the same. It is defined by Webster to be “ a 
foretelling of future events, or discovering things secret or 
obscure, by the aid of superior beings, or by other than human 
means.” u The ancient heathen philosophers,” says he, “divided 
divination into two kinds, natural and artificial . Natural divi- 
nation was supposed to be effected by a kind of inspiration or 
divine afflatus; artificial divination was effected by certain 
rites, experiments, or observations, as by sacrifices, cakes, 
flour, wine,” etc. The main idea was that there was some aid 
derived from spirits superior to man, with whom this knowl- 
edge was, and from whom it could be obtained by favored per- 
sons by compact, or by the performance of certain rites of 
homage or honor rendered to them. 

The same idea was at the foundation of all that there was in 
witchcraft — a subject in its bearing on the matter before ns of 
much more importance than either necromancy, divination or 
sorcery. Few persons, Bationalists or skeptics, would now refer 
either to necromancy, divination or sorcery as having any 
evidence in their favor which would seriously affect the evidence 
in regard to miraculous events; the subject of witchcraft, 
however, as we have seen, does materially affect the whole 
question of evidence, and particularly the evidence in regard to 
supernatural events, since the proof of witchcraft was brought 
before courts sitting in judgment on the very cases ; since 
that proof was so thoroughly examined by men learned in the 
law, and accustomed to sift evidence ; since the alleged facts 
were supposed to be established by incontrovertible evidence ; 
since such trials involved the question of life or death ; and 
since so many innocent persons were actually put to death on 
the ground of such evidence. 

A witch is defined by Webster to be “a woman who, by 
compact with the devil, practices sorcery or enchantment.” 
The essential idea always is that of a compact or agreement 
with the devil, or with evil spirits, by whose aid things are 
done which are beyond the natural power of those who 
practiced witchcraft, or which could not be produced by natural 


218 


MIRACLES. 


laws, and in which the acts, therefore, are, so far, miraculous 
or supernatural. Witchcraft, however, is never associated 
with the idea of divine help or divine power. It never implies 
a compact with God. It is never supposed that what is done 
is done by his power. It is always something within the range 
of beings inferior to God, but superior to man. It is, in this 
respect, wholly distinguished from the idea of a miracle 
properly so-called, where, as we have seen, the idea is that 
of an event where the only antecedent is the icill and poicer of 
God. 

The following things, therefore, enter into the idea of witch- 
craft, and in getting rid of witchcraft by the process of Ration- 
alism, the world has delivered itself from these, and these only : 
(1.) There is a compact with some spirit or spirits inferior to God, 
but superior to man. (2.) The spirit with which the compact is 
made is always a bad, or an evil spirit — as we never associate 
the idea of witchcraft with a good ^demon/* or with a holy 
angel. (3.) The person who is supposed to make the compact 
or who is competent to enter into it, is commonly believed to be 
a woman, and usually an old woman. If there has been a belief 
in wizards , it has been rare, and the common idea in such a 
case is merely that of a juggler, a conjuror, or an enchanter. 
{4.) The matter which pertains to witchcraft is usually some 
trifling matter ; some petty annoyance ; some small injury done 
to property ; some disease brought upon cattle ; rarely, if ever, 
anything that terminates in death. It never has respect to 
a work of beneficence or mercy ; never is employed in healing 
diseases ; never is alleged to be sufficient to give sight to the 
blind ; never lays claim to the power of raising the dead. In 
these respects, also, it is distinguished by broad lines of 
demarkation from all proper ideas of a miracle. 

(b.) The alleged facts in witchcraft were usually such as could, 
and did occur, under the operation of natural causes. All the 
injuries done ; all the diseases inflicted ; all the annoyances 
employed ; all the calamities that fell upon cattle or upon men ; 
all the blightings of the harvest ; all that was involved in the 
idea of pinching or burning — of palsy, or of withered arms or 
hands, or a shriveled skin — all these are things which do 
occur in the world with no necessity of supposing any interven- 
tion of superior beings. Not one of them implies, of necessity, 
the agency of supernatural power; not one of them, as a fact, 


MIRACLES. 


219 


lies beyond the range of explanation from natural causes. They 
are, therefore, as facts , wholly without the range of miracles. 

( c .) The /acts in the alleged case of witchcraft are commonly 
easily established, and there was no difficulty in proving them 
in the courts ; in the matter of miracles the main difficulty is in 
regard to the facts themselves — whether the sun and moon 
actually stood still at the command of Joshua; whether the 
lame man at the pool of Bethesda was actually healed ; whether 
Lazarus was actually dead, and was raised from the dead ; 
whether the Lord J esus actually came to life again after He 
had been put to death on the cross. But the alleged facts as 
pertaining to witchcraft are such as may be easily established — 
that is, what witches are accused of doing may be matter of 
clear and definite proof. That a person is afflicted with some 
form of disease ; that property is destroyed ; that mischief has 
occurred in regard to a man’s cattle, or that there may be 
some form of prevalent disease among them ; that grain about 
to ripen may be suddenly blighted in the field — all these may be 
points of fact that could be easily established, and about which 
there need be no doubt. 

(d.) The main point, therefore, in witchcraft — the point on which 
the whole turned, and on which it differed from all the ques- 
tions connected with miracles, was in connecting^ the accused 
person with the fact ; in showing that the accused person teas the 
cause of it , or the author of it. Thus, in the case of the Duke of 
Gloucester, the point on which the whole turned was not the 
fact that the arm of the duke was dried up, or was shriveled — 
for of that there was no doubt, but it was whether this had been 
caused by the wife of Edward and Jane Shore. That the duke 
affirmed ; that would have been the point in a court of justice; 
that was the only point that would have any bearing on 
the question of witchcraft. That point — the connection of the 
accused persons with the alleged and undoubted facts — teas 
the point which was before the courts— the point on which 
so many hundreds and thousands were condemned to the 
flames. 

And yet how could that point be properly brought before a 
court of justice? What evidence could there be that would 
bear on it? 

It is evident that, in this circumstance, there was all that 
was necessary for wide-spread illusion, imposture, and wrong; 


220 


MIRACLES. 


for the indulgence of all that there was in a community of 
suspicion, malignity, and hatred against particular individuals r 
all that could be devised to keep up the faith of a community in 
the marvelous ; all that was needful to feed and satisfy the 
desire for the belief in the invisible influences, and to perpet- 
uate a prevalent superstition. For what was demanded in the 
case was not the proof of certain facts that might be the 
proper subject of testimony, but the connecting of certain 
obnoxious persons with those facts ; and as soon and as far as- 
the popular idea connected such facts with a certain class of 
persons — as aged females — there would be no lack of witnesses 
to testify to such a connection. 

It is difficult to account for popular illusions ; for the fact 
that a whole community will be affected with such an illusion 
at the same time ; that it may influence all classes of persons $ 
that it will constitute the characteristic of a certain period or a 
certain land ; that it will, for the time, break down all the 
ordinary and sober rules of thinking, and override all that is 
sacred in truth, and solemn in the forms of oaths. It would be 
easy to adduce now, many court of justice, almost innumerable 
witnesses, of most respectable character, that would testify on 
oath to the alleged facts in regard to table-moving and spirit- 
rapping. The witnesses of these alleged facts would not by 
any means be found altogether or mainly among the humblest 
ranks, or the most ignorant in a community, nor among those 
who have no proper idea of the solemnity of an oath, or who are 
ignorant on the subject of evidence. Judges, lawyers, mer- 
chants, professors of chemistry, clergymen — men profoundly 
learned in the sciences, could be found in large numbers who 
would testify to the reality of the facts, and who would do it 
with no ascertainable intention of imposing on mankind. 

It matters little what is the thing that thus becomes the 
subject of popular illusion, and it is to be admitted that if the 
miracles of the Hew Testament could be brought under this 
idea, it would not be less difficult to establish their reality than 
to establish the facts about witchcraft and spirit-rapping. 
Macaulay, in his History of England, refers to an epidemic of 
that nature which followed the successful effort of Titus Oates 
to excite universal alarm in England in regard to the plot to 
murder the king [Charles II] ; to burn the city of London ; to 
revolutionize the kingdom, and to restore it to the dominion of 


MIRACLES. 


Ml 

the Papacy. “ Every person,” says he, “ well read in history, 
must have observed that depravity has its temporary modes, 
which come in and go out like modes of dress and upholstery. 
It may be doubted whether, in our country, any man ever 
before the year 1678 invented and related on oath a circum- 
stantial history, altogether fictitious, of a treasonable plot, for 
the purpose of making himself important by destroying men 
who had given him no provocation. But in the year 1678 this 
execrable crime became the fashion, and continued to be so 
during the twenty years which followed. Preachers designated 
it as our peculiar national sin, and prophesied that it would 
•draw on us some awful national judgment. Legislators pro- 
posed new punishments of terrible severity for this new 
atrocity. It was not, however, found necessary to resort to 
those punishments. The fashion changed ; and during the last 
century and a half there has perhaps not been a single instance 
of this particular kind of wickedness.” * 

Any explanation which will account for a popular illusion or 
a prevalent superstition will account for all the phenomena of 
witchcraft. The power of such an illusion has often been man- 
ifested in the world ; perhaps no one has satisfactorily 
explained the causes. The effect of it is easily understood. It 
is a species of insanity. It indisposes the mind for calm and 
sober thought. It gives reality in the view of the mind to 
that which is desired. It blunts the moral sense, and dims the 
.perception of truth, and perverts all just notions of testimony. 
It gives reality in the view of the mind to that which is the 
creation of the imagination, and, under the force of the illu- 
sion, annihilates for the time all the ordinary feelings of kind- 
ness and humanity. It will lead to the endurance of suffering 
— to the spirit of martyrdom — on the part of those who 
embrace the illusion, and it will make them regardless of the 
severest sufferings of those — though of the tenderest years, 
and of the gentle sex — on whom the suspicion falls. To pity 
them in their tortures would be a crime ; to aggravate their 
sufferings would be a merit. In witchcraft it would be a crime 
of the highest nature to pity those who are in league with the 
devil ; to punish them is to punish the devil himself, and no 
amount of suffering could be beyond his desert. 


^History of England, Yol. iv, p. 155. 


222 


MIRACLES. 


Broad Line of Distinction Between the False and True Wonders.— 

(e.) It is apparent, therefore, that there is a broad line of 
distinction between the miracles of the Bible, and witchcraft, 
necromancy, sorcery, and divination, and that the explanation 
which would meet the one would not affect the other. It is 
apparent, also, that in the one case — the case of witchcraft, 
necromancy, and sorcery, there may be a change in the public 
mind that will effectually banish all belief in these things, that 
will not necessarily, or, in fact, affect the public faith in mira- 
cles. That state of the public mind — that phenomenon — is, in 
fact, reached now. The progress of Bationalism has been such 
for the past hundred years as almost entirely to banish all 
belief in witchcraft and necromancy from the world ; it has 
not been shown that the change of mind on that subject has in 
reality affected the faith of man on the subject of miracles, or 
that they have, in fact, reasoned from the one to the other. 
Indeed, it may be assumed as undoubtedly true that those who 
have become skeptical in this age on the subject of miracles 
are not conscious to themselves that they have been led to 
reject the evidence for miracles because they have seen reason 
to reject the belief in witchcraft, or because the sentiments of 
the world have changed on that subject. This fact I adverted 
to in the Lecture on Miracles, and I cannot but regard it as a 
remarkable fact. I do not know that even skeptics in relig- 
ion, or Rationalists in any form, have urged this as an objec- 
tion to the faith in miracles, or have stated it as a proposition, 
as indicating their own state of mind on the subject, that 
because ' witchcraft, necromancy and sorcery are delusions, 
therefore th# miracles of the Bible and all pretended miracles 
are false. The world at large would not see any connection 
between such premises and such a conclusion. Skeptics them- 
selves would perceive that the world would not admit the 
force of such reasoning. As a matter of fact, no such conclu- 
sion has been reached from these premises. So far as appears, 
the faith of mankind in the miracles of the Bible has noi been 
affected by the change which has occurred in regard to the 
belief in witchcraft, necromancy and divination. The change 
adverted to, especially in regard to witchcraft, is a change 
which has occurred in the Church not less than in the world : 
for the belief in witchcraft pervaded the whole Church, Cath- 
olic and Protestant alike, two centuries ago, and the Church, 


MIRACLES. 


223 


as is often urged by infidels, and, as a matter of fact, was most 
firm in the belief of witchcraft, and most active in the persecu- 
tion of those who were supposed to be under its influence (see 
Lecky, vol. i, pp. 28-34), and yet the Church, while it has 
changed its belief wholly on that subject, has not changed 
its faith in the belief of the miracles of the Bible, and it is cer- 
tain that infidelity would make no impression on the Church 
by arguing from the one to the other. 

Testimony Lacking with Pretended Miracles.— It is a very 
material fact in regard to these pretended miracles, alike in the 
early Christian Church, in the Middle Ages, and in the modern 
Roman Catholic Church, that the testimony is not usually given 
by contemporaries, or those who lived at the time — so far as 
names and dates are concerned, but by writers of a later age. 
This is true alike of the pretended miracles of the early Chris- 
tian Church, of the miracles of the heathen as referred to by 
the enemies of Christianity, of most of the miracles attributed 
to the sacred relics of the Saints, and of most of the mira. 
cles of the “Saints” who have been “canonized” in the Roman 
Catholic Church. Thus miracles are attributed to Pythagoras^ 
not by his contemporaries, but by Porphyry and Iamblichus, who 
wrote his life three hundred years after his death ; the prodigies 
in the History of Rome are recorded, not by persons who lived 
at the time, but by Livy, who lived many centuries afterward ; 
the miracles ascribed to Apollonius of Tyana, of which so 
much has been made by the enemies of Christianity, were not 
recorded by any one living at the time, but the belief in them 
rests solely on the single assertion of his biographer, Philostra- 
tus, who lived a hundred years after the death of Apollonius; 
the accounts of the miracles of Gregory, bishop of Neocsesarea^ 
called Thaumaturgus, from the number and character of the 
miracles which he wrought, is found only in the writings of 
Gregory of Nyssen, who lived a hundred and thirty years after 
him ; and a great part of the legendary miracles of the Popish 
“Saints” depend for their credibility on the certificates pre- 
sented at their “ canonization,” a ceremony which seldom takes 
place till a century after their deaths. 

A single case will illustrate this point, and show its real force 
in the argument. It is that of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of 
the Order of the Jesuits. His life, written by a companion of 
his, was published about fifteen years after his death. In that 


224 


MIRACLES. 


life, the author, so far from ascribing any miracles to Ignatius, 
carefully states the reasons why he was not invested with any 
such power. That life was republished fifteen years afterward, 
with the addition of many circumstances, which were the fruit, 
the author says, of farther inquiry and of diligent examination, 
but still with a total silence about miracles. When Ignatius had 
been dead nearly sixty years, the Jesuits, conceiving a wish to 
have the founder of their Order placed in the Roman calendar, 
began, for the first time, to attribute to him the power of work- 
ing miracles, and specified a large number which could not then 
be distinctly disproved, and which there was, in those who 
governed the Church, a strong disposition to admit on the 
slenderest proofs. 

It is clear that these circumstances constitute a broad line of 
distinction between these alleged miracles and the miracles of 
the New Testament, and that, so far as these cases go, the 
explanation of the one would in no manner constitute an 
explanation of the other. 

It is material, also, to remark, that a large part of the miracles 
alleged to have been wrought in the early Church, and nearly 
all of those wrought in the Roman Catholic Church, were 
wrought, not by the persons themselves while living, but 
by their relics , and many of them hundreds of years after 
the death of the “Saints” themselves. The Ecclesiastical 
History of the Middle Ages and of the Romish Church 
is full of such wonders, and our own age has been 
edified with the accounts of numberless such miracles as 
were wrought by the “ Holy Coat” at Treves. Even Augustine, 
the ablest and most clear-headed of the fathers, and a man of 
undoubted piety, solemnly asserts that in his own diocese at 
Hippo, in the space of two years, no less than seventy miracles 
had been wrought by the body of St. Stephen, and that in the 
neighboring province of Calama, where the relic had previously 
been, the number was incomparably greater. He gives a cata- 
logue of what he deems undoubted miracles, which he says he 
had selected from a multitude so great that volumes would be 
required to relate them all. In that catalogue we find no less 
than five cases of restoration of life to the dead (De Civit. Dei, 
lib. xxii, c. 8). In his Confessions (b. ix, viii, 16) he relates the 
case of miracles wrought by the dead bodies of Gervasius and 
Protasius, which were discovered by Ambrose of Milan, and 


MIRACLES. 


225 


which were removed to the Ambrosian Basilica, particularly the 
restoring of sight to a blind man who was allowed to touch the 
bier with a handkerchief. Of this miracle, and of numerous 
others of a similar kind, he says : “Of which so great glory of 
the martyrs I also was a witness. I was there — was at Milan ; 
I knew the miracles wrought, God bearing witness to ‘the 
precious death of his Saints, 7 so that through those miracles 
that ‘death was precious 7 now, not ‘in the sight of the Lord 7 
only, but in the sight of men 77 (De Civit. Dei, lib. xxii, c. 8, 32). 
It is clear that whatever explanation is given of these miracles, 
the explanation would not be applicable to the miracles of the 
New Testament. 

It is farther to be remarked that the testimony on these sub- 
jects among the fathers, and in subsequent times, involved no 
sacrifices ; led to no persecutions ; was not attended with the loss 
of place or property, or with peril of life. All that is required 
in such cases is what Dr. Paley calls “an otiose assent. 77 They 
are employed for the maintenance of doctrines already em- 
braced ; or in defence of a priesthood already established ; or for 
the credit of an “order 77 of religionists, like the Jesuits; or in 
honor of a particular monastery ; or to commemorate some par- 
ticular virtues of a saint, or to attract men to his shrine. Such 
things require no sacrifices. They demand no abandonment of 
country, of friends, or of home. They lead to no perils by 
sea or land. They involve no dangers of persecution. They 
are not believed and defended with the apprehension of fearful 
tortures ; of being thrown to wild beasts ; of being scourged or 
stoned ; of being burned at the stake, or put to death on a 
cross. They belong to the same class of marvels, in this re- 
spect, as the belief in apparations, ghosts, table-turning, spirit- 
rapping. Whether men would suffer persecution on their 
account might be a fair question ; it is certain that they do 
not. 

But it is hardly necessary to advert to the fact that all this is 
different from the miracles of the New Testament, and the 
treatment of the apostles consequent on their faith in those 
miracles. Those miracles, if real, decided the most important 
questions conceivable in regard to the destiny of mankind. 
The belief in them led to an entire change in the religion of the 
world. They were not wrought to establish any existing system 
of religion, but they led to the overthrow of all the systems of 


o 


226 


MIRACLES. 


religion that did exist, in all lands, involving all that there was 
of property, and position, and influence, and traditionary sacred- 
ness in those religions ; all that there was that was mighty, and 
sacred, and venerable in a priesthood ; and all that was held 
sacred in the laws. The belief in those miracles involved the 
necessity of parting with friends ; of encountering the perils of 
land and ocean ; of meeting with opposition, contempt, persecu- 
tion, and death in its most terrific forms ; of bidding adieu to 
all that was attractive in this life, and of enduring all that 
could be made fearful to human nature while living, and all in 
death that could be made terrible. 

I infer, therefore, that the explanation which must be given 
of the miracles of the early Church after the time of the apostles, 
of the miracles of the Middle Ages, and of the miracles of the 
Eoman Catholic Church, is not a philosophical explanation of 
the miracles of the Bible. 

Conclusions Reached. — The conclusion which we have reached 
is this : If the miracles of the Bible cannot be resolved into 
facts to be explained by natural laws ; if they cannot be philo- 
sophically placed on the same foundation as witchcraft, divina- 
tion, sorcery, mesmerism, and spirit-rapping, and explained in 
the same manner; if they cannot be disposed of as the alleged 
miracles in the Christian Church after the time of the apostles 
may be ; and if they are not on a level with the miracles referred 
to by skeptics as parallel cases, and are not to be explained in 
the same manner, then the argument for the miracles of the 
Bible which has been so satisfactory to a large part of the 
world for eighteen hundred years is as strong as it can be 
supposed to have been in the first century, and the evidence 
is to be regarded as placed on the same foundation as that for 
well-attested historical facts that have gone into the history of 
the world. 

# 

It is to be borne in mind that the real facts of history have 
gone into the history of the world, and have made the world 
what it now is. Those facts, and the proper influence of those 
facts, cannot now be detached from history, or from the present 
condition of the world. The facts in regard to the miracles of 
Christianity, also, have gone into the history of the world, and 
cannot be detached from it. The civilized world is what it is 
now, and the whole world will be what it will be in coming ages, 
because Christ was believed to have wrought miracles, and to have 


MIRACLES. 


227 


been raised from the dead. Those facts were attested by men 
who saw them; who recorded them; who had no special 
interest to promote by them; who abandoned all the opinions 
in which they had been trained be cans o they believed in them ; 
who sacrificed all their prejudices on the ground of that belief; 
who met reproach and calumny, persecution, peril, and death 
in its most fearful forms, in attestation of the truth of those 
miracles ; who never wavered in their statements ; who could 
never be induced by terrors or by bribes to give utterance to a 
doubt about the truth of those events ; and of whom not one — 
no, not one — ever breathed a suspicion that he had been him- 
self deceived, or that those with, whom he was associated 
had conspired to deceive the world. In a most intelligent age ; 
in the very center of learning; among the most cultivated 
people, and in cities where the talent and power of the world 
were concentrated, they bore their testimony, and their testi- 
mony was believed. The religion was propagated on the 
ground of these miracles. The religions of the world were 
changed, and a new order of things, sending its influence 
onward for eighteen hundred years, was instituted on that 
ground. Altars were forsaken ; temples were abandoned ; 
priests were disrobed ; laws were changed ; customs of long 
standing passed away on that ground. A new spirit was 
breathed into the literature of the world on that ground ; and 
philosophy took a new form on that ground. Men were 
changed from vice to virtue on that ground ; and thousands of 
martyrs from all ranks of people — the rich, the honored, the 
gay, the refined — on that ground sealed their faith with their 
blood. The alleged miracles of Yespasian and those at the 
tomb of the Abbe Paris have done nothing — literally nothing — 
permanently to affect the faith, the religion, the hopes, the 
intelligence, or the morals of mankind ; the miracles of Christ 
have changed the world. Myriads of the human race, among 
the most intelligent and pure, have believed that those miracles 
demonstrated that he came from God ; there is nothing yet to 
lead us to doubt that this will be still more prevailingly the 
faith of the world in the ages to come, and that perpetuated faith 
in those miracles will determine the condition of the nations of 
the earth in the winding up of human affairs. — Barnes : Appen- 
dix to u Evidences ” 

[The passages from Barnes and Becky, relied on by B. F. Underwood, 
are in this extract, with the antidote.— Ed.] 


PROVIDENCE. 


C ONCEIVABLE, but Not Evident.— It is conceivable that God 
might have so constituted this world that there should 
have been nothing but general laws, few in number, and free 
from all complexity. For example, there might only have 
been a few such laws as those of universal gravitation, the 
results of which could have been calculated with ease and cer- 
tainty. All coming events, in such a system, could have been 
counted on as confidently as the position of the planets, as the 
periodical return of the tides, as the eclipses of the sun and 
moon. But it is evident, at the first glance, that man is not 
placed in such a state of things. Again, it is conceivable that 
the laws of nature might have been as numerous as they are, 
but arranged so simply as to combine in the most perspicuous 
and incomplex results. It is after this manner, so far as we 
can discover, that the laws of nature operate in the heavens, 
furnishing an order, not only real, but obvious. But it is just 
as evident that this is not the system adopted in the govern- 
ment of the earth, in many of the departments of which there 
appear to the eye of man only reigning confusion and uncer- 
tainty. 

Man at times complicates the relations of natural powers, in 
order to produce fortuity. He shakes, for instance, the dice- 
box, in order that neither he nor any one else may be able to 
predict the die which is to be cast up. There is, we maintain, 
a similar complication in the Divine arrangement of natural 
agents, and all to produce a similar end — to surround man with 
events which are to him accidental, but which to God are 
instruments of government. 

The Adjustment of Physical Nature.— We have seen that phy- 
sical nature is so admirably adjusted as to produce a number 
of very beneficent general laws. The events occurring in this 
orderly manner may be anticipated, pains may be taken for 
welcoming them when they are expected to be good, and of 
avoiding or averting them when they are supposed to be evil. 
But all the results flowing from the adjustment of natural 


PROVIDENCE. 


229 


objects are not of this regular character. There are others, 
which, so far as from being in accordance with any general law, 
are rather the result of the unexpected crossing and clashing, 
contact or collision, of two or more agencies. Falling out in an 
isolated, accidental manner, they cannot possibly be foreseen 
by the greatest human sagacity ; the good which they bring 
cannot be secured by human foresight, nor can the evil which 
they produce be warded off by human vigilance. * * * * 

How a Dread Uniformity is Varied.— It is by this property of 
the Divine government that God brings to pass each of his 
purposes, and makes general laws accomplish individual ends. 
He has so distributed and arranged material substances 
that their laws now check and restrain, and now assist 
and strengthen each other. By this means he varies the 
dread uniformity of natural laws, and arrests at the proper 
time the prejudicial effects which would follow from their un- 
bending mode of operation. We have said that we are not 
jealous of the discovery of law in the government of God ; but 
it is because we have marked how law is made to operate. We 
would be as jealous of law as any man can be, if it acted as some 
represent it — we would be as jealous of it as of mere brute force 
under no control. We are not jealous of the introduction and 
widest extension of general laws ; for in their harmonious ad- 
justment , they acquire a plastic power which enables them to 
fulfill each of the purposes of an all- wise God. While the fixed 
nature of the laws gives to Providence its firmness, the 
immense number and nice adaptation of these laws, like the 
innumerable rings of a coat-of-mail, give to it its flexibility, 
whereby it fits in to the shape and posture of every individual 
man. * 

How God Swells or Subdues Wind, Fire, Water, Etc.^By this 
agency God can at one time increase, and at another lessen or 
completely nullify, the spontaneous efforts of the fixed pro- 
perties of matter. Now, He can make the most powerful 
agents in nature — such as wind, and fire, and disease — coincide 
and co-operate to produce effects of such a tremendous magni- 
tude as none of them separately could accomplish ; and, again, 
He can arrest their influence by counteracting agencies, or rather 
by making them counteract each other. He can, for example, 
by a concurrence of natural laws, bring a person, who is in the 


230 


PROVIDENCE. 


enjoyment of health at present, to the very borders of death an 
hour or an instant hence ; and He can, by a like means, sudden- 
ly restore the same, or another individual, to health, after he 
has been compelled to take a look into eternity. By the con- 
fluence of two or more streams, He can bring agencies of 
tremendous potency to bear upon the production of a given 
effect — such as a war, a pestilence, or a revolution; and on the 
other hand, by drawing aside the stream into another channel, 
He can arrest, at any given instant, the awful effects that would 
otherwise follow from these agencies, and save an individual, 
a family, or a nation, from evils which seem ready to burst upon 
them. ******** 

The Advantages Arising from This mixture. — We are now in 
circumstances to discover the advantages arising from the mix- 
ture of uniformity and uncertainty in the operations of nature. 
Both serve most important ends in the government of God. 
The one renders nature steady and stable, the other active and 
accommodating. Without the certainty, man would waver as 
in a dream, and wander as in a trackless desert ; without the 
unexpected changes, he would make his rounds like the gin- 
horse in its circuit, or the prisoner on his wheel. Were nature 
altogether capricious, man would likewise become altogether 
capricious, for he could have no motive to steadfast action; 
again, were nature altogether fixed, it would make man’s char- 
acter as cold and formal as itself. The recurrences of nature 
surround us by friends and familiar faces, and we feel that we 
can walk with security and composure in the scenes in which 
our Maker has placed us ; the occurrences of nature, on the 
other hand, bring us in contact with new objects and strangers, 
and quicken our energies by means of the feelings of curiosity 
and astonishment which are awakened. 

Wisdom of God Seen in what is Fixed and what is Free. — The wis- 
dom of God is seen alike in what he hath made fixed, and in what 
he hath left free. The regularity, when it is observed by man, 
is the means of his attaining knowledge, scientific and practi- 
cal; while the events which we call accidental enable God to 
turn the projects of mankind as he pleases, towards the fulfill- 
ment of his own wise and mysterious ends. Without the 
uniformity, man would be absolutely helpless ; without the 
contingencies, he would become proud and disdainful. If the 
progressions of nature induce us to cherish trust and confi- 


PROVIDENCE. 


231 


dence, its digressions constrain us to entertain a sense of 
dependence. By tlie one class of arrangements, man is made 
to feel security, and is prompted to that industry to which 
security gives scope; by the other, he is constrained to feel 
that he needs the blessing of heaven, and is led to pour out his 
soul to God in humble supplications. In the one, we see how 
all is arranged to suit our nature ; and in the other, we discover 
that we are as dependent on God as if nothing had been fixed 
or determined; and so the one invites to praise, and the other 
to prayer. It is by the admirable union and blending of the 
two that man is encouraged to cherish a grateful confidence, 
and act upon it, while at the same time he is obliged to enter, 
tain a feeling of dependence, and humble himself before a 
higher power. Let it be added, that while the one shows how God 
would allure us to put confidence in himself, the other proves 
that he puts no confidence in us ; and thus, while the one should 
incite to gratitude and love, the other should awe us into 
reverence and humility .— McGosh : Method of Divine Gov- 
ernment, pp. 160-75. 

Prayer and Answer not Necessarily a Separation from Nature.— It is 
not necessary to suppose that prayer and its answer form a 
separate law of nature, for the answer may come as the result 
of other laws arranged for this very purpose. Nor is it needful 
to suppose that God interposes to change His own laws. The 
analogy of His method of operation in other matters would 
rather incline us to believe that he has so arranged these laws, 
that by their agency He may answer prayer without at all 
interfering with them. We have been endeavoring to develop 
the plan of Providence by which He can secure this end. His 
agents were at first ordained and marshalled by Him for the 
accomplishment of all the wise designs of His government; 
and among other ends they may bring the blessings for which 
faith is expected to supplicate. He sends an answer to prayer 
in precisely the same way as He compasses all His other moral 
designs, as He conveys blessings and inflicts judgments. He 
does not require to interfere with His own arrangements, for 
there is an answer provided in the arrangement made by Him 
from all eternity. How is it that God sends us the bounties of 
His providence? How is it that He supplies the many wants 
of His creatures? How is it that He encourages industry? 
How is it that He arrests the plot of wickedness ? How is it 


232 


PROVIDENCE. 


that He punishes in this life notorious offenders against His 
laws ? The answer is, by the skillful pre-arrangements of His 
providence, whereby the needful events fall out at the very 
time and in the way required. When the question is asked, 
How does God answer prayer ? we give the very same reply — 
it is by a pre-ordained appointment, when God settled the 
constitution of the world, and set all its parts in order. 

Nothing in This Opposed to Divine Government.— There is nothing 
here opposed to the principles of the Divine government, but 
everything in consonance with them. We have, in a previous 
section, shown how events may be joined by a natural tie, by a 
moral tie, or a religious tie. In regard to the natural tie, we 
have shown that in nature there are beautiful relations in the 
works of God, not originating in any causal connection. Again, 
we have hinted that we may expect God to support His moral 
law by physical agencies. Meanwhile, we would have it 
observed, that prayer and its answer may be held as connected 
by a religious tie. Prayer, we have seen, is a duty which man, 
in his present state, owes to his Creator. Man is a religious as 
well as a moral being. There are important relations between 
man and his Maker, originating, no doubt, in morality in its 
widest sense, but rising far above a mere common-place virtue. 
Now, just as God sustains his moral law by the arrangements 
of his physical providence, so we may expect Him also to 
support His spiritual government by the same means. — Dr . 
McCosh: Ibid, pp. 221-3. 

Fortuities of Life under Divine Management.— In the Divine 
management of the fortuities of life, there may also be very 
plainly perceived a dispensation of moral exercise, specifically 
adapted to the temper and the powers of the individual. No 
one can look back upon his own history without meeting 
unquestionable instances of this sort of educational adjustment 
of his lot, effected by means that were wholly independent of 
his own choice or agency. The casual meeting with a stranger, 
or an unexpected interview with a friend ; the accidental post- 
ponement of affairs ; the loss of a letter, a shower, a trivial 
indisposition, the caprice of an associate ; these, or similar 
fortuities, have been the determining causes of events, not 
only important in themselves, but of peculiar significance and 
use in that process of discipline which the character of the 


PROVIDENCE. 


233 


individual was to undergo. These new currents in the course 
of life proved, in the issue, specifically proper for putting in 
action the latent faculties of the mind, or for holding in check 
its dangerous propensities. Whoever is quite unconscious of 
this sort of overruling of his affairs by means of apparent acci- 
dents, must be very little addicted to habits of intelligent 
reflection. 

Doubtless, every man’s choice and conduct determine, to a 
great extent, his lot and occupation ; but not seldom, a course 
of life much better fitted to his temper and abilities than the 
one he would fain substitute for it, has, year after year, and in 
spite of his reluctances, fixed his place and employment in 
society ; and this unchosen lot has, if we may so speak, been 
constructed from the floating fragments of other men’s for- 
tunes, drifted by the accidents of wind and tide across the 
billows of life, till they were stranded at the very spot where 
the individual for whom they were destined was ready to 
receive them. By such strong and nicely-fitted movements of 
the machine of Providence it is, that the tasks of life are 
distributed where best they may be performed, and its burdens 
apportioned where best they may be sustained. By accidents 
of birth or connection, the bold, the sanguine, the energetic,, 
are led into the front of the field of arduous exertion ; while, by 
similar fortuities, quite as often as by choice, the pusillanimous,, 
the fickle, the faint-hearted, are suffered to spend their days 
under the shelter of ease, and in the recesses of domestic 
tranquillity. 

But who shall profess so to understand his particular tem- 
per, and so to estimate his talents, as might qualify him to 
anticipate the special dispensations of Providence in his own 
case? Such knowledge, surely, every wise man will confess 
to be “too wonderful” for him. To the Supreme Intelligence 
alone it belongs to distribute to every one his lot, and to “ fix 
the bounds” of his abode. Yet there are persons whose per- 
suasion of what ought to be their place and destiny is so con- 
fidently held, that a long life of disappointment does not rob 
them of the fond hypotheses of self-love ; and just in propor- 
tion to the firmness of their faith in a particular providence, 
will be their propensity to quarrel with Heaven, as if it 
debarred them from their right in deferring to realize the antici- 
pated destiny. Presumption, when it takes its commencement 


234 


PROVIDENCE. 


in religion, naturally ends in impiety. * * * 

Amid the perplexities which arise from the unexpected events 
of life, we are not left without sufficient guidance : for, 
although, in particular instances, the most reasonable calcula- 
tions. are baffled, and the best plans subverted, yet there 
remains in our hands the immutable rule of moral rectitude, in 
an inflexible adherence to which we shall avoid what is chiefly 
to be dreaded in calamity — the dismal moanings of a wounded 
conscience. u He that walketh uprightly walketh surely,” 
even in the path of disaster. And while, on the one hand, he 
steadily pursues the track which prudence marks out; and, 
on the other, listens with respectful attention to the dictates of 
honor and probity, he may, without danger of enthusiasm, ask 
and hope for the especial aids of Divine Providence, in 
overruling those events that lie beyond the reach of human 
agency. 

Prayer and Provision go Hand in Hand. — Prayer and calculation 
are duties never incompatible, never to be disjoined, and 
never to shackle one the other. For, while those events only 
which are probable ought to be assumed as the basis of plans 
for futurity, yet whatever is not manifestly impossible, or in a 
high degree improbable, may lawfully be made the object of 
submissive petition. Few persons, and none who have known 
vicissitudes, can look back upon past years without recollecting 
signal occasions on which they have been rescued from the 
impending and apparently inevitable consequences of their own 
misconduct, or imprudence, or want of ability, by some extraor- 
dinary intervention in the very crisis of their fate, or, perhaps, 
they have been placed by accident in circumtances of peril, 
where, as it seemed, there remained not a possibility of escape. 
But, while the ruin was yet in descent, rescue, which it would 
have been madness to expect, came in to preserve life, fortune, or 
reputation, from the imminent destruction. That such con- 
spicuous deliverances do actually occur, is matter of fact; 
nor will the Christian endure that they should be attributed to 
any other cause than the special care and kindness of his 
heavenly Father ; and yet, as they belong to an economy which 
stretches into eternity, and as they are not administered on any 
ascertained rule, they can never come within the range of our 
calculations, or be admitted to influence our plans ; a propen- 
sity to indulge such expectations indicates infirmity of mind, 


PROVIDENCE. 


235 


and is, in fact, an intrusion upon the counsels of infinite 
wisdom. 

Nevertheless, so long as these extraordinary interventions 
are known to consist with the rules of the divine government, 
they may be contemplated as possible without violating the 
respect that is due to its ordinary procedures ; and may, therefore, 
without enthusiasm, be solicited in the hour of peril or perplex- 
ity. The gracious “Hearer of prayer,” who, on past and well- 
remembered occasions, has signally given deliverance, may do so 
again, even when, if we think of our own imprudence, we have 
reason to expect nothing less than destruction. What are 
termed, by irreligious men, “the fortunate chances of life,” will 
be regarded by the devout mind as constituting a hidden 
treasury of boons, held at the disposal of a gracious hand for 
the incitement of prayer, and for the reward of humble faith. 
The enthusiast who, in contempt of common sense and of recti- 
tude, presumes upon the existence of this extraordinary 
fund, forfeits, by such impiety, his interest in its stores. But 
the prudent and the pious, while they labor and calculate in 
strict conformity to the known and ordinary course of events, 
shall not seldom find that from this very treasury of contingen- 
cies “ God is rich to them that call upon Him .” — Isaac Taylor : 
Natural History of Enthusiasm, pp. 132-7. 

The Prayer Question Discussed Editorially.— Certain, then, as it 
is, that the laws of the material universe are absolutely un- 
changeable, it is equally certain that they are susceptible of a 
boundless variety of distinct combinations. Whether all or- 
ganic forms and all animal and vegetable life are, or are not, the 
results of the presence of some one hidden universal material 
agent, in operation, the phenomena are the same. The laws of 
gravity, of chemical affinity, of electric action, of heat, and 
every other force that is concerned in carrying forward organic 
change and vegetable and animal life, produce in reality 
infinite variations of results, according to the conditions under 
which their powers are called into action. These combinations 
at one time give birth to the cholera, at another to the cattle 
plague, at another to rich harvests, at another to famine. These 
combinations, moreover, are not the result of the boundless 
varieties of the action of material forces alone. We ourselves 
imitate these fresh combinations every moment that we live. 
Human life, in fact, is carried on by means of a perpetual 


236 


PROVIDENCE. 


struggle of the human will with the elementary laws of physical 
action. The actual condition of the material world is totally 
unlike what it would have been if man had never existed on 
this globe. We live upon the forms of vegetable and animal 
life, which are created in harmony with physical law, as con- 
strained to yield to our personal control. The chemical 
condition of the atmosphere is modified by every movement of 
our lungs, by every fire we light, by every candle we blow out, 
by every forest we plant, by every field we drain. It is not too 
much to say that the position of the center of gravity in the 
great globe itself can be made to move, in a real, though to us 
inappreciable degree, by the alterations we work in the form 
of the earth’s surface. The remedies we are now devising for 
the warding off of the cholera are in reality an intervention 
with the modes of operation of chemical, atmospherical and 
pathological law. We cannot alter these laws in themselves, 
but by the exercise of our wills we can compel them, like the 
spirits in Oriental tales, coerced by the- seal of the mighty 
Solomon, to yield results, not deadly, but life-giving. Thus, 
then, in a most true and real sense, the great Author of physical 
law permits us, if we so please to call it, to interfere with the 
universe as He originally created it. Or rather this incessant 
interference is the very condition of our own life ; and physical 
law can only be called unchangeable, with the proviso that it 
is to this extent changeable at the dictates of the will of man. 

Granting, then, the belief (which we are not called on to 
argue), that prayer is in its essence a direct intercourse between 
rational beings and the Author of physical laws, there appears 
no scientific difficulty in conceiving that, in reply to our 
solicitation, He might himself institute fresh combinations in 
their operation of the same nature as those which we ourselves 
undoubtedly produce every hour that we live. Ho reasonable 
person will deny the abstract possibility of the same modifica- 
tions of the work of law, caused by the direct power of God, 
which can be accomplished by us. It would, in truth, be 
ridiculous to doubt it. The supremacy and unchangeableness 
of law would be in each case untouched. The theory of those 
who most vigorously deny the possibility of anything wearing 
the semblance of miraculous interference would not be im- 
pugned by a hair’s breadth .— Editor of Pall Mall Gazette , Oct . 
9, 1865. 


PROVIDENCE. 


237 


[The preceding is from the article replied to by Prof. Tyndall. In the 
judgment of many scientific men, the answer was quite inadequate. — 
Ed .] 

God Either Supreme or Subject. — God is either supreme or sub- 
ject. If subject, then I become an Atheist at once, for a sub- 
ject God is no God. If he has passed over the line of my life 
to the control of a law ora series of laws, then, so far as I am 
concerned, He is dethroned. If any law of the universe stands 
between me and the direct ministry of God to my wants and 
my worthy wishes and aspirations, then I may as well pray to 
my next door neighbor as to Him. Thus Providence is to me 
a question which involves the existence of God. If law is a 
greater and a more powerful thing than He who established it, 
then, to me, He is practically of no account. I live, and move, 
and have my being, in law, and not in Him. I sprang from law, 
I exist in law, and I am carried on by law I know not whither. 
If God pity me, He cannot help me. If He would save me, He 
cannot. Between Him and me His law places an impassable 
gulf, across which we may stretch our helpless hands toward 
each other to all eternity without avail. He is a prisoner, and 
I am a prisoner ; and I may legitimately pity His weakness as 
much as He pities mine. 

Either Benevolent or Indifferent.— Again, God is either benev- 
olent in His feelings toward each individual child on His 
universe, or He is utterly indifferent, or positively malicious. 
We look to Him as the author of all things —as the father 
of our spirits and the maker of our bodies, no more than 
as the author and founder of all law. If I decide in my 
mind that He has voluntarily placed it out of His power 
to help me by instituting between me and Him a law which 
shuts Him from direct ministry to me, I decide, in effect, that 
He is indifferent to me, or malicious toward me. When I 
decide this, I dethrone Him just as essentially as when I decide 
that He is subject to His own law, and helpless in regard to its 
operation ; for a God who is either indifferent or malicious has 
no claim upon my fealty or my affection. A God who does not 
love me has no claim upon my love. A God who voluntarily 
puts it beyond His power to aid me, or do me good, puts it 
equally beyond His power to do me direct harm. He is, there- 
fore, nothing to me. 


238 


PROVIDENCE. 


If not so, then He is no God to us.— Thus, if there be not a God 
of Providence who ministers to my daily individual wants, and 
prescribes for me the discipline of my life — a God who hears 
me when I cry to Him, and holds immediate relations with me 
every moment of my life, so far as I am concerned, there is no 
God at all. Ah ! but there is a God. Few are the men who 
doubt this, and they are not those who would be convinced of 
their error by argument of mine. All healthy souls recognize 
the existence of this Being, and recognize among His attributes 
utter supremacy and infinite benevolence. Now, the point I 
make is this : that the moment we recognize God as supreme 
in power and infinitely good and loving toward all His intelli- 
gent creatures, that moment we admit the doctrine of universal 
and special Providence. There is no God, and there can be 
none, who is not a God of Providence. It is only to such a 
God that we can pray. It is only such a God that can, 
by possibility, call out our affections, or hold us to allegiance. 
Everything that passes under the name of religion becomes a 
mockery and a delusion the moment we place Him behind laws, 
which, like prison-bars, restrain Him from all participation in 
human affairs. * * * I assume, that with- 

out a belief in a general and special Providence, no man who 
thinks at all upon the subject can be truly happy. We are all 
breakers of law — we are a race of law-breakers. The moment 
the mind swings loose from a belief in Providence, it plunges 
helpless and overwhelmed into a wild waste of penalties, from 
which there is and can be no extrication while existence 
endures. What has the history of the race been but that of 
law-breaking? Yet, in spite of this — in spite of a violation 
which has become the habit of the world — it lives, and, thank 
God ! progresses towards goodness. If law had been left alone 
of God’s Providence to work out its own blind ends, there 
would not be a breathing man upon the face of the earth 
to-day. It is for the reason that we live and move and have 
our being in God, and not in law, that there rises to Heaven 
the smoke of a single city, or waves upon the hillside the 
burden of a single cultivated harvest. 

Why Dethrone a God of Providence I— Let no man be deceived 
by that subtlest of all infidelities which dethrones a God of 
Providence. The very hairs of our head are numbered by 
Him, and not even the life of a sparrow that He has made is 


1 


PROVIDENCE. 


239 


extinguished without His notice. There is not an infant’s wail, 
a sigh of auguish, a groan of pain, or a word of prayer, breathed 
in the humblest abode, that He does not hear. Over all our 
struggles and toils He stoops with a loving eye, and with a 
heart anxious that the discipline He has established for us 
may do us good. He knows all our doubts and fears ; He 
rejoices in all our worthy hopes and joys. When we kneel, He 
sees us ; when we pray, He hears. His presence envelopes us, 
His knowledge comprehends us, His power upholds us. All 
law and all being are alike dependent, moment by moment, 
upon Him for existence. The ultimate root of every flower 
that bends beneath its weight of dew is planted in His will. It 
is His breath that breaks the bosom of the sea into billows ; it 
is His smile that soothes it into rest. The blue sky that 
bends over us is but the visible image of His loving bosom, 
holding myriad worlds in the infinite depths of His tenderness. 
Ah, let it never be hidden to the eye of faith by the showers 
of blessings which come from it, borne on the wings of natural 
law. 

I know of no skepticism more fatal to the development of 
religion in the heart than that which dethrones a God of Provi- 
dence. In vain shall we look for a true piety among those who, 
through absorption in scientific pursuits, or devotion to the 
details of natural law in mechanical and similar callings, are 
brought to the deification of law. Law has no love, no pity, 
no mercy, no patience. Law has nothing in it to touch our 
sympathies, or call out our affections. If it have power in an 
indirect way to rouse within us a sense of responsibility for 
our conduct, it is only to curse us with the thought that it has 
no power to forgive. — Dr. Holland : Gold Foil, pp. 82-8. 

A Responsive Touch at the Higher End Vibrates to the Lower.— 
It may be by a responsive touch at the higher, and not the lower 
part of the progression (or train of causes and effects), that He 
answers our prayers. It may be not by an act of intervention 
among those near and visible causes, where intervention would 
be a miracle ; it may be by an unseen, but not less effectual act 
of intervention, among the remote and therefore the occult 
causes, that He adapts Himself to the various wants, and meets 
the various petitions of His children. If it be in the latter 
way that He conducts the affairs of His daily government- 
then may He rule by a providence as special, as are the needs 


240 


PROVIDENCE. 


and the occasions of His family; and with an ear open to every 
cry, might He provide for all and administer to all, without 
one infringement on the uniformity of visible nature. If the 
responsive touch be given at the lower part of the chain, then 
the answer to prayer is by miracle, or by a contravention to 
some of the known sequences of nature. But if the responsive 
touch be given at a sufficiently higher part of the chain, then 
the answer is effectually made, but not by miracle, and without 
violence to any one succession of history or nature which phi- 
losophy has ascertained — because the reaction to the prayer 
strikes at a place that is higher than the highest investigations 
of philosophy. It is not by a visible movement within the 
region of human observation, but by an invisible movement in 
the transcendental region above it that the prayer is met and 
responded to. The Supernal Power of the Universe, the 
mighty and unseen Being who sits aloft, and has been signifi- 
cantly styled the Cause of causes — He, in immediate contact 
with the upper extremities of every progression, there puts 
forth an overruling influence which tells and propagates down- 
wards to the lower extremities ; and so by an agency placed 
too remote either for the eye of sense or for all the instru- 
ments of science to discover, may God, in answer if He choose 
to prayer, fix and determine every series of events — of which, 
nevertheless, all that man can see is but the uniformity of the 
closing footsteps — a few of the last causes and effects follow- 
ing each other in their wonted order. It is thus that we rec- 
oncile all the experience which man has of nature’s uniformity, 
with the effect and significancy of his prayers to the God of 
nature. It is thus that at one and the same time, do we live 
under the care of a presiding God, and among the regular- 
ities of a harmonious universe . — Thomas Chalmers : Vol. 1st , 
jp. 354. 

Erroneous Notions Concerning Special Care.— The notion that a 
miracle must be wrought, every time there is an act of special 
care or love in behalf of an individual, a community, or a nation, 
is altogether erroneous and confusing. And the notion that 
God cannot answer prayer without interfering with the estab- 
lished order of things, is equally erroneous and misleading. 
Men hear and answer the prayer of their fellows, and the cries 
of dumb beasts, without in the least disconcerting God’s 
plans ; why may He n<}t hear and answer prayers without dis- 


PROVIDENCE. 


241 


arranging his own ordinations ? If it be said that God’s plans 
were laid in fall view of all the prayers that men would address 
to each other, and the answers to these prayers, we reply that 
His plans could just as readily be laid in full view of all the 
prayers that men would address to Him, and the answers there- 
to. These objections to prayer and providence are much 
shallower, when tested, than at first blush they appear to be. 
We remember to have read, many years ago, in Greg’s “Creed 
of Christendom,” an argument to prove the impossibility of 
prayer being answered by God. Mr. Greg admitted the possi- 
bility of spiritual beings such as angels heaving our cries and 
answering them — just as if an angel hearing a prayer and 
answering it would not as truly disturb the general order of 
things as if God had himself heard and answered ! Nay, 
it may be, in ten thousand instances, that angelic ministrations 
are employed as the means of answering our prayers. But to 
come more directly to the point of inquiry as to how special 
providences may be wrought without miracle, we refer to two 
of the most remarkable instances of special providence in the 
Old Testament. 

The Life of Joseph Exemplifies the Matter. — 1 . Look at the 
history of Joseph. Study it well. Its bearings on the future 
of the tribes of Israel, and through them on the fate of many 
nations, are very strong. It is not too much to say that if 
Joseph had not lived and died, or if the life of Joseph had been 
different, the fate of Israel would have been different, and the 
fate of many principalities, and kingdoms, and even of some 
empires, would have been different to an extent that we have 
no means of calculating. How much of human destiny was 
wrapped up in the connection of events in Joseph’s life, none 
can tell. If ever a human life was under the special care of 
Jehovah, Joseph’s was; and that not for his own sake, but for 
the sake of the nations and the ages of humanity. It presents 
a wonderful series of special providences, all tending to one 
end ; but where is the miracle f There is none. The result is 
brought about- by a combination of influences, in all of which 
there is at once the free play of human will and the overruling 
Providence of God. The most remarkable changes were 
wrought out through dreams , in which we have no reason to 
believe there was any overstepping of the limitations of natural 
law. 

P 


242 


PROVIDENCE. 


Also Esther’s History. — 2. Read the Book of Esther. See how 
the Jewish race was preserved from destruction; how Hainan 
was brought to justice, and how a whole empire was made ac- 
quainted with the name and character of Jehovah; and yet there 
was no miracle. While there were many wonderful combina- 
tions of influences, the main point on which the whole strange 
history turns is the king’s sleeplessness , and an effort to soothe 
it by reading to him the chronicles of the kingdom ; by which 
means Mordecai’s forgotten services were brought to remem- 
brance. That this restlessness of the king was providential, 
none can doubt ; but it could be brought about and evidently 
was brought about, without ,a miracle. The subtle influences 
that operate normally on the human mind are by no means 
clearly understood ; but physiological and psychological inves- 
tigations have been carried far enough to prove that there are 
conditions under which mind may impress mind silently, yet 
powerfully, by other than the ordinary methods, yet doubtless 
through the operation of laws that are uniform in their work- 
ing. How many mighty results have been wrought out by 
impressions , warnings , encouragements , imparted in silence, by 
an invisible jiower, we may never know until the mists have 
cleared away that hang over and surround all the realms of 
spirit. We presume there are few lives whose history would 
not reveal turning points where these subtle forces have been 
felt and acknowledged. — Isaac Errett . 

The World Not a Machine. — We are sometimes told that it gives 
us a more elevated idea of the Divine wisdom and power, to 
regard the Creator as having finished His work once for all, 
and then abandoned it to its own unerring laws, than to repre- 
sent him as interfering, from time to time, by the way of direct 
personal superintendence ; just as it implies higher mechanical 
skill to make an engine which shall go on perpetually by its 
own motion, than one which requires to be continually regula- 
ted by the hand of its maker. This ingenious simile fails only 
in the important particular, that both its terms are utterly 
unlike the objects which they profess to represent. The world 
is not a machine ; and God is not a mechanic. — Mansel : Limits 
of Religious Thought, p. 173. 

God Stands in a Special Relation to Man.— The course of Divine 
Providence, in the government of the world, is represented in 


PROVIDENCE. 


*43 


Scripture under the twofold aspect of General Law and Special 
Interposition. Not only is God the Author of the Universe, 
and of those regular laws by which the periodical recurrence 
of its natural phenomena is determined ; but He is also ex- 
hibited as standing in a special relation to mankind ; as the 
direct cause of events by which their temporal or spiritual 
welfare is affected ; as accessible to the prayers of His 
servants; as to be praised for His special mercies towards 
each of us in particular. * * * * It may be a higher evi- 

dence of mechanical skill to abandon brute matter once for all 
to its own laws ; but to take this as the analogy of God’s deal- 
ings with his living creatures — as well tell us that the highest 
image of parental love and forethought is that of the ostrich, 
u which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in 
dust.” But if such conclusions are not justified by our a priori 
knowledge of the Divine nature, are they borne out empirically 
by the actual constitution of the world? — Mansel: Ibid,pp. 170-3. 

A Mutilated God. — They want a truer, a juster i^ea of the 
Deity as He is, than that under which He has been pleased to 
reveal Himself; and they call on their reason to furnish it. 
Fools, to dream that man can escape from himself, that human 
reason can draw aught but a human portrait of God ! They do 
but substitute a marred and mutilated humanity for one exalted 
and entire ; they add nothing to their conception of God as he 
is, but only take away a part of their conception of man. 
Sympathy, and love, and fatherly kindness, and forgiving 
mercy, have evaporated in the crucible of their philosophy; 
and what is the caput mortuum that remains, but only the 
sterner features of humanity exhibited in repulsive nakedness. 
The God who listens to prayer, we are told, appears in the 
likeness of human mutability. Be it so. What is the God who 
does not listen, but the likeness of human obstinacy ? Do we 
ascribe to him a fixed purpose ? our conception of a purpose is 
human. Do we speak of Him as continuing unchanged? our 
conception of continuance is human. Do we conceive of Him 
as knowing and determining ? what are knowledge and deter- 
mination but modes of human consciousness ? and what know 
we of consciousness itself, but as the contrast between succes- 
sive mental stages ? 

But our rational philosopher stops short in the middle of his 
reasoning. He strips off from humanity just so much as suits 


244 


PROVIDENCE. 


his purposes: “and the residue thereof he maketh a god;” 
less pious in his idolatry than the carver of the graven image, 
in that he does not fall down unto it and pray unto it, but is 
content to stand off and reason concerning it. 

Idolatry Better than Rationalistic Worship.— Surely, downright 
idolatry is better than this rational worship of a fragment of 
humanity. Better is the superstition which sees the image of 
God in the wonderful whole which God has fashioned, than 
the philosophy which would carve for itself a Deity Out of the 
remnant which man has mutilated. Better to realize the satire 
of the Eleatic philosopher, to make God in the likeness of 
man, even as the ox or the horse might conceive gods in the 
form of oxen or horses, than to adore some half hewn Hermes, 
the head of a man joined to a misshappen block. Better to fall 
down before that marvellous compound of human conscious- 
ness whose elements God has joined together, and no man can 
put asunder, than to strip reason of those cognate elements 
which together furnish all that we can conceive or imagine of 
conscious or personal existence, and to deify the emptiest of all 
abstractions, a something or a nothing, with just enough of its 
human original left to form a theme for the disputations of 
philosophy, but not enough to furnish a single ground of 
appeal to the human feelings of love, of reverence, and of 
fear. Unmixed idolatry is more religious than this. Undis- 
guised atheism is more logical. — Mansel : Ibid, pp. 56-8. 

[This is the author B. F. Underwood relies on to do away with a God. 
Hence, these passages are valuable testimonies. — Ed.] 

Men Had Heard of a Juridical Deity Before Christ Came.— Men 

had heard of God who created all things, who governed all 
things, who weighed and measured all human thoughts and 
feelings, and stamped with ineffaceable lives the moral character 
of the race. This magisterial and juridical Deity, revealed to 
men through the types of civil government, was powerful to 
incite fear and to restrain from evil. This vision of God must 
always remain, having certain purposes, and having in it the 
office of representing certain truths respecting the divine 
nature. But this view does not express God. To represent 
a being as perfectly holy, and as sitting in the circle of holi- 
ness, holding the race to absolute purity, almost without 
sympathy, except that which is doled out on certain con- 


PROVIDENCE. 


245 


ditions — that is not to represent God, though it is to represent 
something about God. 

Men, too, had heard of a God perfect in holiness. Their 
thoughts had ranged until weary through that vast circle inhab- 
ited by the ideal of perfect justice and truth. It was the latest 
disclosure of the divine nature that, within that august power 
which had been revealed, and beating like a heart within that 
perfect holiness, there was a nature of exquisite sympathy and 
tenderness; that the energies of that Almighty Being were 
exerted in the service of mercy and kindness ; that the direc- 
tion of God’s nature was toward love; and that, although alter- 
natively there were justice and judgment, yet they were but 
alternative ; while the length and breadth, the height and 
depth of God was in the sphere of love — potential, fruitful. 

Now, God of Mercies and Comfort.— Consider what that nature 
must be which is here styled the Father of all mercies . When 
a man begets children, they are in his own likeness. God 
groups all the mercies of the universe into a great family of 
children, of which he is the head. Mercies tell us what God is. 
They are his children. He is the father of them, in all their 
forms, combinations, multiplications, derivations, offices. Mer- 
cies in their length and breadth, in their multitudes infinite, 
uncountable — these are God’s offspring, and they represent 
their Father. Judgments are effects of God’s power. Pains 
and penalties go forth from his hand. Mercies are God him- 
self. They are the issues of His heart. If he rears up a 
scheme of discipline and education which requires and justifies 
the application of pains and penalties for special purposes, the 
God that stands behind all special systems and all special 
administrations, in His own interior nature pronounces Himself 
the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. By comfort , 
we mean those influences which succor distress ; which 
soothe suffering ; which alleviate grief, and convert the whole 
experience of sorrow to gladness. 

Consider that God is declared, not at times and upon fit 
occasions, to produce comfort, but that he is the very God of it. 
If we might imagine a kingdom wide and rich in all the .ele- 
ments of consolation, where every ill found its remedy, and 
every sorrow its cure — a celestial sanitarium, out of which 
issued winds bearing health every-whither — then, there, in its 
own center, and exalted to the highest place, is God, sovereign, 


246 


PROVIDENCE. 


and active in comforting. For this he thinks ; for this he plans ; 
for this he executes : for this he waits ; for this he lives. 

A Realm of Sorrow Everywhere. — Oh ! what a realm of sorrow 
lies under this “kingdom. Oh ! what a need there has been 
in this world that there should be somebody to comfort. “The 
whole creation has groaned and travailed in pain until now.” 
Men have been born, it would seem, that they might be suffer- 
ers. Nations have been wrapped in darkness. Tribulation has 
come like the sheeted doom of storms, and swept whole con- 
tinents. Ages have been stained with blood. Tears have 
been so abundant that they have been too cheap to count. 
Weeping has had more work in this world than laughing. 
Trouble has ruled more than joy. * * * * 

Oh ! what need there is that up out of this darkness and 
trouble and sadness, out of these calamities, there should be 
exalted, somewhere, an image that writes upon itself, “I am 
the God of Comfort.’ 7 That brings God right home to man’s 
need. The world would die if it had not some hope of finding 
such a God. 

God a Present Helper. — He penetrates and pervades the 
universe with his nature and with his disposition. My flagging- 
faith has need of some such assurance. I have walked very 
much in thought with those old philosophers that believed 
that there was a God, too, of evil, as well as of good ; and I 
am more willingly a disciple, therefore, of that inspired teach- 
ing which declares that evil is not a personage. It is not even 
an empire. Like the emery and sand with which we scour off 
rude surfaces, evil and trouble in this world are but instru- 
ments. And they are in the hands of God. If they bite with 
sharp attrition, it is because we need more scouring. It 
is because men’s troubles need ruder handling and chisel- 
ing, that evils float in the air, swim in the sea and spring 
up from out of the ground. But all is under the control of the 
God of consolation , as it is said elsewhere ; the God of comfort , 
and the Father of mercies , as it is said here. More are the 
tender thoughts, the inspired potential actions, in God, than 
the stars in the heavens. Innumerable are the sweet influences 
which He sends down from His realm above. More and purer 
are His blessings than the drops of dew which night shakes 
down on the flowers and grass. He penetrates and pervades 


PROVIDENCE. 247 

tfie world with more saving mercies than does the sun with 
particles of light and heat. 

The True Conception of God.— Listen to this symphony and 
chant of the apostle, wherewith he prays that “ we might be 

able to comprehend with all saints ” Stand back as he builds 

the statue, glowing at every touch with supernal brightness ! 
“That we might be able to comprehend ” what? That wire- 
drawn, fine, finical character that too often theology has skele- 
tonized; that filmy and silky substance abstracted almost 
beyond the grasp of the understanding, reduced, for the sake 
of a certain notion of perfection, to an abstraction that is 
absolutely unusable in practical life — is this God? No. As 
he builds, listen : “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by 
faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love may be able to 
comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length, and 
depth and height ; and to know the love of Christ which pas- 
seth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of 
God” 

This is the true conception of God. This is that majestic 
and mighty Heart, rich, glowing, glorious, yearning, and desir- 
ing good, and scattering it as through the spheres he scatters 
light and atmosphere. This is that vast, voluminous God that, 
when Paul looked up out from the cloudy world, from amidst 
its rain-drops, he saw riding triumphantly, and spreading His 
bow over the storms which beat and afflicted him in this lower 
mortal state. This is the God that declares himself to be, 
in this wicked, sin-smitten, ruined world, the God of all comfort 
— the great-breasted God, the great mother-God, into whose 
arms come those that weep, where He comforts them, even as 
a mother comforts her child. And the earth itself is rocked, 
as it were, by that same tending, nursing, loving God, if only 
its inhabitants knew what is the consolation that is addressed 
to them. — Beecher : Vol. 1, pp. 15-19. 

What Hlakes Up the History of Our Race ? — Open your eyes on 
the world. Observe what is dailyoccurring in it — events which 
leave no impression on the mind, because they daily occur, yet 
in themselves full of wonder, pregnant with a thousand deep 
suggestions to the thoughtful spirit. Take up a newspaper, 
and turn to the column which gives its stated chronicle of 
births and deaths — the brief epitome of human history — the 


248 


PROVIDENCE. 


table which records, with almost barometric precision, the daily 
influx, and the daily discharge, in that vast tide of generations 
which rolls on and on, with ceaseless roar and undying echoes, 
through the hollow vault of time, heedless of the prayer, 
unchecked by the science and energy of man, sweeping all 
before it, relentless and resistless, into the deep abyss of eter- 
nity. With what calm indifference does the eye glance over 
that record of mortality ! and yet what a story is unfolded in 
it! In those few lines, the diverse fates, the uncertainties and 
accidents of human life, will all be found. Within their short 
compass, the dread mystery of Providence is contained. 
There death, the great reality which awaits us all, stands 
revealed in awful clearness. There are recorded, side by side, 
the peaceful exit of exhausted age, and the sudden blight and 
fall of blossoming youth: the slow consumption of life by 
lingering disease, and its instantaneous extinction by accident or 
visitation of God : the thronged and honored obsequies of the 
benefactor of his kind, and the silent interment, from which 
memory turns shuddering aside, of the self-destroyer. All 
these things are before us. They make up the history of our 
race, in the most interesting and solemn event which befalls us. 
Chance seems to dispose of them ; but we are sure that no 
chance is there — that it is but the semblance of it, the result of 
our ignorance and limitation ; we are sure there is a meaning 
and a purpose in all these things, though it may surpass our 
present knowledge to discover fully what it is — though we 
may be compelled to refer our deep persuasion of its existence 
to boundless faith in the wisdom and goodness of the Eternal 
Father . — John James Tayler : Christian Aspects of Faith and 
Duty, p. 335. 

Can God Neglect Us ? — There is a Providence exercised by God 
in the world, and that about everything. As Providence infers 
omniscience as the guide of it, so omniscience infers Providence 
as the end of it. What exercise would there be of this attri- 
bute, but in the government of the world ? To this, this infinite 
perfection refers (Jer. xvii : 10) : “ I the Lord search the heart, 
I try the reins, to give every man according to his ways, and 
according to the fruit of his doings.” He searches the heart to 
reward ; he rewards every man according to the rewardable- 
ness of his actions ; His government, therefore, extends to 
every man in the world ; there is no heart but he searches, 


PROVIDENCE. 


249 


therefore no heart but he governs ; to what purpose, else, would 
be this knowledge of all His creatures? For a mere contem- 
plation of them ? No. What pleasure can that be to God, 
who knows himself, who is infinitely more excellent than all his 
creatures? Doth He know them to neglect all care of them? 
This must be either out of sloth, but how incompatible is lazi- 
ness to a pure and infinite activity ! Or out of majesty, but it 
is no less for the glory of His majesty to conduct them, than it 
was for the glory of His power to erect them into being. He 
that counts nothing unworthy of His arms to make, nothing 
unworthy of His understanding to know, why should He count 
anything unworthy of His wisdom to govern ? If He knows 
them to neglect them, it must be because He hath no will to it, 
or no goodness for it ; either of these would be a stain upon 
God; to want goodness is to be evil, and to want will is to be 
negligent and scornful, which are inconsistent with an infinite, 
active goodness. Doth a father neglect providing for the wants 
of the family which he knows ? or a physician, the cure of that 
disease he understands ? God is omniscient; He, therefore, 
sees all things: He is good; He doth not therefore neglect 
anything, but conducts it to the end He appointed it. There is 
nothing so little that can escape His knowledge, and therefore 
nothing so little but falls under His providence ; nothing so 
sublime as to be above His understanding, and therefore 
nothing can be without the compass of His conduct ; nothing can 
escape His eye, and therefore nothing can escape His care. 
— Gharnock : On the Attributes , Vol. 1 , p. 469. 

Fortune, a Myth. — This we call fortune, that serpentine and 
crooked line, whereby he draws those actions his wisdom 
intends, in a more unknown and secret way. This cryptic and 
involved method of his providence have I ever admired ; the 
occurrences of my days, the escapes of dangers, and hits of 
chance, with a Bezo las Manos to fortune, or a bare gramercy to 
my good stars. * * * Surely, there are in 

every man’s life certain rubs’, doubtings and wrenches, which 
pass awhile under the effects of chance, but, at the last, well 
examined, prove the mere hand of God. — Sir Thomas Browne: 
Religio Medici , Part 1st ; Section 17. 

Not a God. — Let not fortune, which hath no name in Scripture, 
lave any in thy divinity. Let Providence, not chance, have 


250 


PROVIDENCE. 


the honor of thy acknowledgments, and be CEdipus in contin- 
gencies. Mark well the paths and winding ways thereof ; but 
be not too wise in the construction, or sudden in the applica- 
tion. The hand of Providence writes often by abbreviations, 
hieroglyphics or short characters, which, like the Laconism on 
the wall, are not to be made out but by a hint or key from that 
spirit which indited them. — Sir Thomas Browne : Christian 
Morals , Part 1st, Section 25. 

Resignation. — A firm persuasion of the superintendence of 
Providence over all our concerns is absolutely necessary to 
our happiness. Without it, we cannot be said to believe in the 
Scripture, or practice anything like resignation to his will. If 
I am convinced that no affliction can befall me without the per- 
mission of God, I am convinced likewise that he sees and knows 
that I am afflicted ; believing this, I must in the same degree 
believe that if I pray to him for deliverance, he hears me ; I 
must needs know, likewise, with equal assurance, that if he 
hears, he will also deliver me, if that will upon the whole be 
most conducive to my happiness ; and if he does not deliver 
me, I may be well assured that he has none but the most 
benevolent intention in declining it. — William Cowper : To 
Lady Hesketli, Sept. 4 th, 1765. 

[It is stated that Cowper, daring one of his severe attacks of melan- 
choly, rushed furiously to a stream to drown himself. On the way he 
was marvelously thwarted, and returned home to pen, “God moves 
in a mysterious way,” &c. — Ed.] 

All Things €ome from God. — ? Tis enough for a Christian 
to believe that all things come from God, to receive 
them with acknowledgment of his divine and inscru- 
table wisdom, and also thankfully to accept and receive 
them, with what face soever they may present them- 
selves ; but I do not approve of what I see in use, that is, to 
seek to continue and support our religion by the prosperity of 
our enterprises. Our belief has other foundation enough, 
without going about to authorize it by events ; for the people 
accustomed to such arguments as these, and so proper to their 
own taste, it is to be feared, lest when they fail of success, 
they should also stagger in their faith. — Montaigne’s Essays : 
Chapter 31st. 


PROVIDENCE. 


251 


God is Consistent and Righteous. — God is no machine. He is our 
heavenly Father. His attributes are not distinct and separate, 
but they blend and coalesce into one great moral nature. He 
does not act justly to-day and mercifully to-morrow ; He always 
acts right. His course, in every instance, is the result of all 
the moral forces in His divine character. Justice cannot act 
without mercy, and mercy cannot act without justice. Justice 
is always merciful, and mercy is always just. We know this 
by our own hearts. The man or the government, in the true 
and normal condition of things, that acts, right, is always both 
just and merciful. If God ever punishes any being, it is 
because it is right to do so, justice and mercy uniting to 
constitute the righteousness of the act. 

God’s acts are all in conformity to the great law of right. 
He does nothing arbitrarily. Let it be said reverently, but let 
it be said, that God is under obligation to do right. Right and 
wrong, in the abstract, are essential and eternal principles. 
The divine One can claim the homage of rational, moral beings 
only as he appears righteous in their eyes. No man can 
worship an unrighteous God. The law of right demands of 
God that he do all that he can for the well-being of his creatures. 
Even when they sin, if it is possible to redeem them, the 
eternal law of righteousness interposes in their behalf. Is not 
every parent conscious of this obligation toward his children*? 
Though they transgress, he should still pursue them with 
his entreaties, and recover them, if possible. The great moral 
law of the moral universe demands this ; and every moral being 
is profoundly conscious of it. Let us remember also that God 
desires the homage of all his creatures. He is never so well 
pleased and they never so happy, as when, under the influence 
and inspiration of His own righteous character and divine 
nature their hearts melt in adoration, and their souls are 
lifted in “ wonder, love and praise.” — Pro/. A. B. Jones. 

The Attitude of a Man of Science.— We may pray to God, ex- 
pecting Him, through His infinite knowledge, to grant to us 
things which to our short sightedness seem almost impos- 
sible. Therefore, the attitude of the man of science is that a 
man ought to feel the necessity of prayer, if he believes in a 
God. The idea of prayer, is inseparable from the idea of God. 
Nay, more, we can have more confidence in Him as a God 
working by law. 


252 


PROVIDENCE. 


In like manner in regard to miracles. If it is held that God 
has ordained and arranged all things from the beginning, it is 
hard to believe — one almost cannot believe — that miracles could 
have been performed under these circumstances. Yet the 
Bible tells us of them. If we hold a God who has not taken 
the trouble to perfect things at the beginning, then we shall not 
see anything seriously to interfere with miracles. Science 
holds that God is a God who works by law, and that if He works 
miracles these shall come under some higher part of His will 
and law. That is all that science has a right to demand, and 
all, I think, that legitimate science will demand. Prayer in a 
Scriptural sense of it is simply an appeal to One whose knowl- 
edge of and power over His own works enable Him to work 
results inconceivable to us. There might be higher ground 
taken on this subject, but I take that that science takes. 

But, now, consider the position of the materialist who says 
it avails nothing to pray for rain. Elijah would not have thought 
of asking that the sun should give rain. He knew that the sun 
was under law, but he believed that the law-giver was acces- 
sible to prayer, and in this his position was rational as well as 
one of faith. This is the true position of the Scripture here. 
We might retort on those who ridicule prayer, that it is they 
and not the Bible that interpose a wall of brass between us 
and heaven. We can imagine, for instance, the scorn with 
which a philosopher of the time of Hume would greet the 
statement from a merchant that he could stand in his office in 
London and direct instantaneously his agents in China and 
America. The great man who founded this lectureship (Prof. 
Morse) was one of the miracle workers in electricity. That 
good and wise man saw no good reason for not believing in God 
and believing in his electrical power still. I would have you 
bear in mind, too, that the Apostle tells us that Elijah was a 
man of like passions with ourselves. Elijah had faith in God. 
That same power that Elijah wielded any man may wield. — • 
Principal Dawson: Tribune-Extra, No. 26. 

Superintendence of the World Not too Difficult for God.— When 
any one acknowledges a moral government of the world ; per- 
ceives that domestic and social relations are perpetually oper 
ating, and seem intended to operate, to retain and direct men 
in the path of duty ; and feels that the voice of conscience, the 
peace of heart which results from a course of virtue, and the 


PROVIDENCE. 


253 


consolations of devotion, are ever ready to assume their office 
as our guides and aids in the conduct of all our actions ; he 
will probably be willing to acknowledge also that the means of 
a moral government of each individual are not wanting ; and 
will no longer be oppressed or disturbed by the apprehension 
that the superintendence of the world may be too difficult for 
its Ruler, and that any of His subjects and servants may be 
overlooked. — Dr. Whew ell. 

The Exclusion of a Deity Destroys moral Sense.— The exclu- 
sion of a Supreme Being and of a superintending Providence 
tends directly to the destruction of moral taste. It robs the 
universe of all finished and consummate excellence, even in 
idea. The admiration of perfect wisdom and goodness for 
which we are formed, and which kindles such unspeakable 
rapture in the soul, finding in the regions of skepticism 
nothing to which it corresponds, droops and languishes. In a 
world which presents a fair spectacle of order and beauty, of 
a vast family nourished and supported by an Almighty Parent 
— in a world which leads the devout mind, step by step, to the 
contemplatation of the first fair and the first good, the skeptic 
is encompassed with nothing but obscurity, meanness and dis- 
order . — Robert Hall : Modern Infidelity. 

Prosperity and Adversity Contrasted. — The virtue of prosperity 
is temperance ; the virtue of adversity is fortitude. Prosperity 
is the blessing of the Old Testament ; adversity is the blessing 
of the Hew, which carrieth the greater benediction and the 
clearer revelation of God’s favor. Yet, even in the Old Testa- 
ment, if you listen to David’s harp, you shall hear as many 
hearse-like airs as carols ; and the pencils of the Holy Ghost 
hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the 
felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears 
and distastes ; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. 
We see in needle-works and embroideries, it is more pleasing 
to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to 
have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground ; 
judge, therefore, of the pleasure of the heart by the pleasure of 
the eye. Certainly, virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant 
where they are incensed or crushed ; for prosperity doth best 
discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue . — Lord 
Bacon : Essays. 


254 


PROVIDENCE. 


Providence on the Alert. — Let no man who owns a providence 
grow desperate under any calamity or strait whatsoever, but 
compose the anguish of his thoughts upon this one considera- 
tion, that he comprehends not those strange, unaccountable 
methods by which providence may dispose of him. * * * 

In all our undertakings, God will be either our friend or our 
enemy ; for Providence never stands neuter. * * * 

Providence never shoots at rovers ; there is an arrow that flies 
by night as well as by day, and God is the person that shoots 
it. — South : Sermons. 

Providence Singles out Nations. — It may be superstition, per- 
haps, but I cannot alter the nature and character of my under- 
standing, which, as long as I can look back, has dictated to me, 
as a comforting truth, that the Divine Providence singles out 
particular nations, and perhaps even individual men, to carry 
on the slow and mysterious system of the world. This island, 
although placed on the very margin of civilization, has been 
its example and protector — spreading the blessings of a pure 
religion and of equal laws to the remotest ends of the earth. 
My impression, my lords, has always been, that such an unpar- 
alleled dominion is but a more exalted trust, and that if we fall 
off from the character which bestowed it, and which fitted us 
for its fulfillment, we shall be deservedly treated like sentinels 
who desert, or who sleep upon their posts. — Rrshine : Speech 
at Trial of Queen Caroline , 1820 . 

Everything Provided For. — It hath so pleased God to provide 
for all living creatures wherewith he hath filled the world, that 
such inconveniences as we contemplate afar off are found, by 
the trial and witness of men’s travels, to be so qualified as 
there is no portion of the earth made in vain. That which 
seemeth most casual and subject to fortune, is yet disposed by 
the ordinance of God. Providence is an intellectual knowl- 
edge both foreseeing, caring for, and ordering all things, and 
doth not only behold all past, all present, and all to come, but 
is the cause of their being so provided, which prescience is 
not. — Sir Walter Raleigh. 

God’s Shadows. — He saw far down the street a mighty shadow 
break the light of noon, which, tracing backward, till its airy 
lines hardened to stony plinths, he raised his eyes o’er broad 
facade and lofty pediment, o’er architrave and frieze and sainted 


PROVIDENCE. 


255 


niche, up the stone lace-work chiselled by the wise Erwin of 
Steinbach, dizzily up to where in the noon-brightness the great 
Minster’s tower, jewelled with sunbeams on its mural crown, 
rose like a visible prayer. 

“Behold !” he said, “the stranger’s faith made plain before my 
eyes. As yonder tower outstretches to the earth the dark 
triangle of its shade alone, when the clear day is shining on its 
top, so darkness in the pathway of man’s life is but the shadow 
of God’s Providence, by the great Sun of Wisdom cast thereon ; 
and what is dark below is light in heaven. — Whittier : Poems , 
p. 232. 

Invisible Friends. — What means the ghostly creation that 
everywhere pursues me ? “Thou hast,” said the old man, lovingly 
and refreshingly, “nothing but invisible friends about thee — and 
cast thyself everywhere upon God. There are a great many 
Christians who say, God is near or far off, that his wisdom and 
his goodness appear quite specially in one age or another — 
truly that is an idle deception; is he not the unchangeable, 
eternal Love, and does he not love and bless us at one hour 
just as much as at another ?” As we ought, properly, to call the 
eclipse of the sun an eclipse of the earth, so it is man who is 
obscured, never the Infinite; but we are like the people who 
look at the obscuration of the sun in the water, and then, when 
the water trembles, cry out, “See how the glorious sun 
struggles !” — Jean Paul Richter: Titan , Vol. 1, 382. 

Committed to Providence. — How calmly may we commit our- 
selves to the hands of Him who bears up the world — of Him 
who has created and who provides for the joys even of insects 
as carefully as if He were their father. — Richter . 

Jupiter’s Chair. — The moral of that poetical fiction, that the 
uppermost link of all the series of subordinate causes is 
fastened to Jupiter’s chair, signifies * * * that Almighty 

God governs and directs subordinate causes and effects. — Sir 
Matthew Male . 

The Divine Inspection. — The divine inspection into the affairs 
of the world, doth necessarily follow from the nature and 
being of God ; and he that denies this, doth implicitly deny his 
existence ; he may acknowledge what he will with his mouth, 
but in his heart he hath said, “ There is no God.”— Bentley. 


256 


PROVIDENCE. 


Promiscuous Good and Evil Rectified. — The promiscuous and 
undistinguishing distribution of good and evil, which was nec- 
essary for carrying on the designs of Providence in this life, 
will be rectified in another. — Addison . 

What Our Existence Depends On. — Our existence is dependent 
on a succession of changes which are taking place at every 
moment in ourselves, but of which each one involves the 
necessity of the existence and the superintending power of the 
Deity. — Dr, Wayland. 


MORAL EVIL. 



HE Troublous Question.— With regard to this problem I know 


<?% it is often said, that no theory ever offered, and none that 
ever can be offered, does, or will, throw any satisfactory light 
upon it; and that those only who do not understand the 
problem, will imagine that it can be relieved, in any degree, 
from its insurmountable difficulties. It may be that this is my 
own case ; at any rate I must risk the imputation, for I conceive 
that this problem does not defy all human efforts for relief or 
explanation. I do not believe that a point so essential to any 
reasonable comprehension of the lot of our life, is left to be a 
dark and terrible enigma. It would be strange, indeed, if the 
one thing that crushes me to the earth — evil , should be as 
unintelligible as if it were the blindest mischance ; if the only 
word I can utter, when writhing with pain, or weighed down by 
affliction, is mystery . ****** 

The question is, how comes evil to be in the world ? Or, in other 
words, why was it not excluded from the system ? How often 
does the vision rise before our minds, of a world without pain 
and without sin, without one sorrow or wrong in all its blessed 
dwellings ; and we say, with a tone, perhaps, of something like 
complaint, as well as heavy sighing, why could not this world 
have been such? And the answer that I give is, that it was in 
the nature of things impossible. This is my principle — that it 
was, in the nature of things, and by the inevitable conditions 
of the problem, impossible to exclude evil . — Dewey : Problem 
of Human Destiny , pp. 31-5. 

Finite Beings and Their Incapacities. — A being that cannot err 
must be infinite in all his attributes. Wherever there is finite- 
ness, there is necessarily and unavoidably the possibility and 
capability of wrong-thinking and wrong-doing. Absolute per- 
fection inheres only in the Infinite, and because he is infinite. 
Imperfection inheres in the finite because they are finite. Here 
lies the potential origin of sin ; the possibility of sinning being 
inseparable from, and inherent in, finite beings. It may lie 


Q 


258 


MORAL EVIL. 


dormant, as in the infant, or subdued, as in the saint, but in the 
former, time will show that the power needs only the develop- 
ment of manhood, and in the latter, temptation will show that 
it is only subdued, not eradicated. On the horizon, therefore, 
of creation hung the cloud of peccability, but seen only by the 
Creator himself. ****** 

Finite beings are subjects of influences which may degrade 
or elevate ; retard or accelerate their growth. They are essen- 
tially and necessarily progressive in their nature. They are, 
therefore, mutable ; and if mutable, then unstable and ultimately 
peccable. Finite wisdom and knowledge must hesitate under 
the pressure of perplexing questions, and out of hesitation 
may come the wrong choice, though honest, earnest and 
sincere. 

Their Capacities. — Besides, those beings have powers and 
desires which are inherent in their natures and inseparable 
from their being. On these, influences exert their legitimate 
force, and produce their natural results. One power may be 
increased by these, while others lie dormant, because not exci- 
ted to action. So with desires — some are active and some are 
dormant, because of the presence or absence of influences 
capable of arousing them to activity, and increasing their 
strength, and confirming the growth consequent on their 
activity. While any power or, desire is active, the being is 
under its influence more or less, unless its reason and will 
wholly resist. The will is master of every power and every 
desire ; so that, after all, its choice is the action of the being, 
whether good or bad. The actual existence of sin, therefore, 
depends on the choice or determination of the will, and not 
really on either the nature of finite beings, or the character 
and strength or weakness of the influences operating on them ; 
for the will can keep down the peccable nature, and resist all 
influences whatsoever, and thus assert its majesty and divinity. 
The positive power of resistance and determination must cer- 
tainly be greater than any negative weakness that may spring 
from a peccable nature or finiteness of its powers. 

Their Dilemmas. — Beings who are thus capable of determining 
their choice, and who are sovereigns of their actions, must, in 
the very nature of the case, be held responsible for the choice 
they may make, or the act they may do, if there be such a thing 


MORAL EVIL, 


259 


as a wrong choice, and a wrong action. The will can plead no 
excuse based oh the finiteness of its nature, or the peccability 
of its being. If the will has weakness, it has also strength. If 
it should plead in excuse the weakness of its powers in yield- 
ing to temptation, it could not deny the fact that it can, and 
sometimes does, resist influences which urge its obedience. 
Hence, if it plead its weakness to fall, it cannot deny that it 
has also the power to stand. So long as it manifests the power 
to resist good influences, it cannot plead its weakness in exten- 
uation of its sin in yielding to bad ones. 

Such being the nature of rational beings, such as men and 
angels, the existence of sin, with its sad and terrible conse- 
quences among these beings, cannot be attributed to God in 
any way, or to any extent that will implicate Him in so fearful 
a contingency as sin has been shown to be. — Hr. Christopher: 
Remedial System , pp. 32-40. 

The Mystery of Physical Pain. — The existence of pain of any 
sort is objected to as inconsistent with the divine benevolence. 
Ho thoughtful person will venture to affirm that the mystery of 
physical pain can be entirely cleared up ; but it can certainly 
be lessened. On the other hand, no one has a right to declare 
it an outcome of malevolence, unless he has a complete knowl- 
edge of the system of things. Pain in general has a double 
function. It appears either as a warning and an incentive to 
development, or as the consequence of transgressing some 
condition of existence. As a warning, its function is plainly 
beneficent ; and as an incentive to development, things being 
as they are, it is plainly necessary. There is no assignable 
way of preserving organisms from speedy destruction without 
making them subject to possible pain. Again, if pain did not 
exist in possibility, it is impossible to see what security we 
should have for either physical or mental development. Even 
the animal world would lose itself in a mollusk flabbiness, as 
devoid of meaning as it would be of beauty. To this the 
pessimist will reply, that God should have made things per- 
fect from the start. Mind and body should both h»ve been 
complete, and the dangers and risks of development should 
have been avoided. He is willing to allow that, as things are, 
pain and privation have in general a beneficent function. 
Exercise, resistance, struggle, and the spurs and finger-posts 
of pain, are all necessary for the development of such beings 


260 


MORAL EYIL. 


as actually exist. But why are things as they are ? Why does 
not another kind of beings exist? Above all, why does not 
God interfere to prevent all ill, when he might just as well do 
it as not? Mr. Mill gives the extremest expression to this 
feeling in the following passage : 

Mill’s View. — “ For, how stands the fact ? That next to the 
greatness of these cosmic forces, the quality which most forci- 
bly strikes every one who does not avert his eyes from it, is 
their perfect and absolute recklessness. They go straight 
to their end, without regarding what or whom they crush on 
the road. Optimists, in their attempts to prove that ‘what- 
ever is, is right,’ are obliged to maintain, not that Nature ever 
turns one step from her path to avoid trampling us into destruc- 
tion, but that it would be very unreasonable in us to expect 
that she should. Pope’s ‘ Shall gravitation cease when you go 
by?’ may be a just rebuke to any who should be so silly as to 
expect common human morality from nature. But if the ques- 
tion were between two men, instead of between a man and a 
natural phenomenon, that apostrophe would be thought a rare 
piece of impudence. A man who should persist in hurling 
stones or firing cannon when another man ‘goes by,’ and having 
killed him, should urge a similar plea in exculpation, would 
very deservedly be found guilty of murder.”* 

Curious Opinions Held. — It is curious what different opinions 
men hold. When the Christian teaches a doctrine of Divine 
Providence, according to which God is in living and loving 
contact with every being in the system, and is caring for all, 
and guiding all to the best results, his doctrine is often 
denounced as a miserable anthropomorphism ; but here, Mr. 
Mill appears with a demand that gravitation shall be suspended, 
fire shall not burn, water shall not drown, cold shall not freeze, 
and no natural law have its proper effect, if in any way we 
should be injured thereby. Some speculators, especially of 
Mill’s own school, will notallow God to suspend a law of nature 
in order to attest a Divine revelation to man ; but if laziness or 
blockheaMism bring one into trouble, God must hasten to shield 
him from the consequences, under penalty of being charged 
with murder, etc. It is difficult not to detect an odor of 
insanity in the passage we have quoted, for certainly it would 


*Three Essays on Religion, p. 28. 


MORAL EVIL. 


261 


be impossible to imagine a more contemptible system than one 
in which such perpetual miracle should occur. It would be a 
universal nursery for the perpetuation of helplessness and 
incompetency. Surely, if any one will criticize the universe, he 
ought to suggest improvements instead of disastrous modifi- 
cations. ******* 

How to Consider Ulan’s Pain. — In considering the case of man, 
we deal first with the natural evil to which he is subject. The 
human soul, as it exists, can be made perfect only through 
struggle and suffering. Nowhere else have these elements so 
beneficent an office as in the case of man. The higher manifes- 
tations of character spring almost entirely from the soil of 
sorrow. If we should strike out from human history the 
heroic and saintly characters which have been born from 
suffering, all that is noble and reverend would depart. If we 
should strike from literature all to which sorrow has given 
birth, its inspiration would perish forever. Even the presence 
of death has brought a solemn tenderness and dignity into 
human affection which had otherwise been impossible. Virtue, 
too, acquires sturdiness only from resisted temptations ; and 
even mind itself grows only through obstacle and resistance. 
* * * * * Bodies might easily have been made in 

their mature form; but it would be an incalculable loss to 
humanity if the ministry of childhood were wanting. It is, 
also, conceivable that the mental faculties should begin in a far 
more developed stage than they do ; but it is not clear that 
the outcome for well-being would have been much greater. 
There is a distinct demand in human nature for self-develop- 
ment ; and hence no one has a tithe of the enjoyment in things 
or thoughts inherited, which he has in things or thoughts pro- 
duced by himself. Even the child finds more delight in the 
crudest toy of his own manufacture than in the finest product 
of the shops. The joy of intellect does not consist in reaching 
some fixed attitude, but in ever moving onward. 

Nature’s Perfection to Ulan Consists in its Imperfection. — Con- 
cerning the relation of physical nature to man, it must be said 
that its perfection consists in its imperfection. A nature which 
furnished no obstacle to man, but spontaneously supplied all 
his wants, would not only be paralyzing, it would be intolerable. 
A perfect physical world would be, for human purposes, a perfect 
failure. We want something to conquer and subdue; and in 


262 


MORAL EVIL. 


such conquest we win vastly more delight than from any 
amount of inactive gratification. We also want something to 
criticize. Over against the stupidity of nature, we want to put 
our conception of a better ; and we seek to force nature to 
accept our improvement. To the healthy mind, there is no 
more contemptible conception of human destiny than simply 
immortal good feeling. No true man wants to have good 
showered upon him; he wants only a fair chance to win good 
for himself. The beggar is willing to live on charity; but the 
man insists on earning his own bread . — Borden P. Bowne : 
Studies in Theism, pp. 363-9. 

God Cannot Enjoin or Inspire Evil. — What can be more absurd 
to imagine, than that Infinite Goodness should enjoin a thing 
contrary to itself, and contrary to the essential duty of a creature, 
and order him to do anything that bespeaks an enmity to the 
nature of the Creator, ora deflourLng and disparaging his works ¥ 
God cannot but love himself, and his own goodness ; he were 
not otherwise good ; and, therefore, cannot order the creature 
to do anything opposite to this goodness, or anything hurtful 
to the creature itself, as unrighteousness is. 

Nor can God secretly inspire any evil into us. It is as much 
against his nature to incline the heart to sin as it is to com- 
mand it; as it is impossible but that he should love himself, 
and therefore impossible to enjoin anything that tends to a 
hatred of himself; by the same reason it is as impossible that 
he should infuse such a principle in the heart, that might carry 
& man out to any act of enmity against him. To enjoin one 
thing, and incline to another, would be an argument of such 
insincerity, unfaithfulness, contradiction to itself, that it 
cannot be conceived to fall within the compass of the Divine 
nature, who is a a God without iniquity,” because a a God of 
truth,” and sincerity, “just and right is he.” To bestow excel- 
lent faculties on man in creation, and incline him, by a sudden 
impulsion, to things contrary to the true end of him, and in- 
duce an inevitable ruin upon that work which he had composed 
with so much wisdom and goodness, and pronounced good 
with so much delight and pleasure, is inconsistent with that 
love which God bears to the creature of his own framing; to 
incline his will to that which would render him the object of his 
hatred, the fuel for his justice, and sink him into deplorable 
misery, it is most absurd, and unchristian-like to imagine. 


MORAL EVIL. 


263 


He Cannot Necessitate Sin. — Nor can God necessitate man to sin. 
Indeed, sin cannot be committed by force ; there is no sin but is 
in some sort voluntary: voluntary in the root or voluntary in 
the branch; voluntary by an immediate act of the will, or 
voluntary by a general or natural inclination of the will. That 
is not a crime to which a man is violenced, without any con- 
currence of the faculties of the soul to that act ; it is, indeed, 
not an act, but a passion ; a man that is forced is not an agent, 
but a patient under the force ; but what necessity can there be 
upon man from God, since he hath implanted such a principle 
in him, that he cannot desire anything but what is good, either 
really or apparently; and if a man mistakes the object, it is 
his own fault : for God hath endowed him with reason to dis- 
cern, and liberty of will to choose upon that judgment. And 
though it is to be acknowledged that God hath an absolute 
sovereign dominion over his creature, without any limitation, 
and may do what he pleases, and dispose of it according to his 
own will, as a potter doth with his vessel, according as Isaiah 
says : “We are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are 
the work of thy hand;’ 7 yet he cannot pollute any undefiled 
creature by virtue of that sovereign power, which he hath to 
do what he will with it ; because such an act would be contrary 
to the foundation and right of his dominion, which consists in 
the excellency of his nature, his immense wisdom, and 
unspotted purity ; if God should therefore do any such act, he 
would expunge the right of his dominion by blotting out that 
nature which renders him fit for that dominion, and the exer- 
cise of it. * * * * But that we may the better conceive 

of this, let us trace man in his first fall, whereby he subjected 
himself and all his posterity to the curse of the law and hatred 
of God; we shall find no footsteps, either of precept, outward 
force, or inward impulsion. The plain story of man’s apostacy 
dischargeth God from any interest in the crime as an encour- 
agement, and excuseth him from an appearance of suspicion, 
when he showed him the tree he had reserved, as a mark of 
his sovereignty, and forbade him to eat of the fruit of it ; he 
backed the prohibition with the threatening the greatest evil 
— death: which could be understood to imply nothing less 
than the loss of all his happiness ; and in that couched an 
assurance of the perpetuity of his felicity, if he did not, rebel- 
liously, reach forth his hand and eat of the fruit. 


264 


MORAL EVIL. 


Charnock’s Notion of the Forbidden Fruit. — It is true God had 
given that fruit an excellency, “a goodness for food and a 
pleasantness to the eye.” He had given man an appetite, 
whereby he was capable of desiring so pleasant a fruit ; but 
God had, by creation, arranged it under the command of 
reason, if man would have kept it in its due obedience ; he had 
fixed a severe threatening to bar the unlawful excursions of it ; 
he had allowed him a multitude of other fruits in the garden, and 
given him liberty enough to satisfy his curiosity in all, except 
this only. Could there be anything more obliging to man, to 
let God have his reserve of that one tree, than the grant of all 
the rest ; and more deterring from any disobedient attempt 
than so strict a command, spirited with so dreadful a penalty. 
God did not solicit him to rebel against Him ; a solicitation to 
it and a command against it, were inconsistent. The devil 
assaults him, and God permitted it, and stands, as it were, a 
spectator of the issue of the combat. There could be no 
necessity upon man to listen to, and entertain the suggestions 
of the serpent ; he bad a power to resist him, and he had an 
answer ready for all the devil’s arguments, had they been mul- 
tiplied to more than they were ; the opposing the order of God 
had been a sufficient confutation of all the devil’s plausible 
reasonings ; that Creator, who hath given me my being, hath 
ordered me not to eat of it. 

A discharge of God from this first sin will easily induce a 
freedom of him from all other sins which follow upon it. God 
doth not then encourage, or excite or incline to sin. How can 
he excite to that which, when it is done, he will be sure to 
condemn ? How can he be a righteous Judge to sentence a 
sinner to misery for a crime acted by a secret inspiration from 
himself? Iniquity would deserve no reproof from him, if he 
were any way positively the author of it. — Gharnock: Attri- 
butes, Vol. 2, p. 123. 

Ail Able Exegesis of God’s Command to Adam.— The present 
address of God to Adam, without the exceptive clause, would 
be a mere license, and not a command. But with the exceptive 
clause it is a command, and tantamount in meaning to the fol- 
lowing positive injunction : Thou mayest eat of these trees 
only. An edict of license with a restrictive clause is the 
mildest form of command that could have been imposed for 
the trial of human obedience. Some may have thought that it 


MORAL EYIL. 


265* 


would have been better for man if there had been no tree of 
the knowledge of good and evil. But second thoughts will 
correct this rash and wrong conclusion. 1st. This tree may 
have had other purposes to serve in the economy of things of 
which we are not aware ; and, if so, it could not have been 
absent without detriment to the general good. 2d. But with- 
out any supposition at all, the tree was fraught with no evil 
whatever to man in itself. It was in the first instance the 
instrument of great good, of the most precious kind, to him. 
It served the purpose of calling up into view out of the depths 
of his nature the notion of moral obligation, with all the kin- 
dred notions of the inherent authority of the Creator, and 
the innate subordination of himself, the creature ; of the 
aboriginal right of the Creator alone in all the creatures ; and 
the utter absence of any right in himself to any other creature 
whatsoever. 

What the Tree Did for man. — The command concerning this 
tree thus set his moral convictions agoing, and awakened 
in him the new and pleasing consciousness that he was a moral 
being, and not a mere clod of the valley or brute of the field. 
This is the first thing this tree did for man ; and we shall find 
it would have done a still better thing for him if he had only 
made a proper use of it. 3d. The absence of this tree would 
not at all have secured Adam from the possibility or the con- 
sequence of disobedience. Any grant to him whatsoever must 
have been made with the reserve , implicit or explicit, of the 
rights of all others. The thing reserved must in equity have 
been made known to him. In the present course of things it 
must have come in his way, and his trial would have been 
inevitable, and therefore his fall possible. How, the forbidden 
tree is merely the thing reserved. Besides, even if man had 
been introduced into a sphere of existence where no reserved 
tree or other thing could ever have come within the range of 
his observation, and so no outward act of disobedience could 
have been perpetrated, still, as a being of moral susceptibility, 
he must come to the acknowledgment, express or implied, of 
the rights of the Heavenlv Crown, before a mutual good under- 
standing could have been established between him and his 
Maker. Thus we perceive that even in the impossible Utopia 
of metaphysical abstraction there is a virtual forbidden tree, 
which forms the test of a man’s moral relation to his Creator. 


266 


MORAL EYIL. 


Now, if the reserve be necessary, and therefore the test of 
obedience inevitable, to a moral being, it only remains to 
inquire whether the test employed be suitable and seasonable. 

The Thing Reserved Appropriate.— That which is here made the 
matter of reserve, and so the test of obedience, is so far from 
being trivial or out of place, as has been imagined, that it is the 
proper and the only object immediately available for these pur- 
poses. The immediate want of man is food. The kind of food 
primarily designed for him is the fruit of trees. Grain, the 
secondary kind of vegetable diet, is the product of the farm rather 
than of the garden, and therefore does not come now into use. 
As the law must be laid down before man proceeds to an act of 
appropriation, the matter of reserve and consequent test of 
obedience is the fruit of a tree. Only by this can man at 
present learn the lessons of morality. To devise any other 
means, not arising from the actual state of things in which man 
was placed, would have been arbitrary and unreasonable. The 
immediate sphere of obedience lies in the circumstances in which 
he actually stands. These afforded no occasion for any other 
command than that which is given. Adam had no father, or 
mother, or neighbor, male or female, and therefore the second 
table of the law could not apply. But he had a relation to his 
Maker, and legislation on this could not be postponed. The 
command, then, assumes, the kindest, most intelligible and con- 
venient form for the infantile mind of primeval man. — Dr. 
Murphy : “Genesis,” pp. 97-9. 

God’s Equity in Permitting the Temptation.— We are bound to 
acknowledge and maintain, in the most explicit manner, the 
equity of the divine procedure in permitting the temptation of 
man. The only new thing here is the intervention of the 
tempter. It may be imagined that this deceiver should have 
been kept away. But we must not speak with inconsiderate 
haste on a matter of such import. 1st. We know that God has 
not used forcible means to prevent the rise of moral evil 
among his intelligent creatures. We cannot with reason affirm 
that he should have done so ; because, to put force on a volun- 
tary act, and yet leave it voluntary, seems to reason a contra- 
diction in terms, and, therefore, impossible ; and unless an act 
be voluntary, it cannot have any moral character ; and without 
voluntary action, we cannot have a moral agent. 2d. We know 
that God does not immediately annihilate the evil-doer. Neither 


MORAL EVIL. 


267 


can we affirm with reason that he ought to have done so ; for, 
to lay an adequate penalty on sin, and then put the sinner out 
of existence, so that this penalty can never be enacted, seems to 
reason a moral inconsistency, and, therefore, impossible in a being 
of moral perfection. 3d. We know that God does not with- 
draw the evil-doer from all intercourse with other moral agents. 
Here, again, reason does not constrain us to pronounce that 
it is expedient so to do ; for the innocent ought, and it is 
natural that they should, learn a holy abhorrence of sin, 
and a salutary dread of its penalty, from these waifs of 
society, rather than follow their pernicious example. The 
wrong-doers are not less under the control of God than if they 
were in the most impenetrable dungeon ; while they are at the 
same time constant beacons to warn others from transgression. 
He leaves them to fill up the measure of their iniquity, while 
the intelligent world are cognizant of their guilt, that they may 
acknowledge the justice of their punishment, and comprehend 
the infinite holiness of the judge of all the earth. 4th. We know 
that God tries His moral creatures. Abraham, Job, and all 
His saints have to undergo their trial. He suffered the Lord 
Jesus Christ, the second Adam, to be tempted. 

Adam at No Disadvantage in His Trial. — And we must not expect 
the first Adam to be exempted from the common ordeal. We 
can only be assured that His justice will not allow His moral 
creatures to be at any disadvantage in the trial. Accordingly, 
first : God himself in the first instance speaks to Adam, and 
gives him an explicit command not arbitrary in its conception, 
but arising out of the necessity of the case. And it is plain 
that Eve was perfectly aware that He had himself imposed this 
prohibition. Second : The tempter is not allowed to appear 
in his proper person to our first parents. The serpent only is 
seen or heard by them — a creature inferior to themselves, and 
infinitely beneath the God who made them, and condescended 
to communicate with them with the authority of a father. 
Third : The serpent neither threatens nor directly persuades ; 
much less is he permitted to use any means of compulsion : he 
simply falsifies. As the God of truth had spoken to them before, 
the false insinuation places them at no disadvantage. 

Man Now Comes to the Practice of Morals.— Man has now come 
to the second step in morals— the practice. Thereby, he has 


268 


MORAL EVIL. 


come to the knowledge of good and evil, not merely as an ideal, 
but as an actual thing. But he has attained this end, not by 
standing in, but by falling from, his integrity. If he had stood the 
test of this temptation, as he might have done, he would have 
come by the knowledge of good and evil equally well, but with 
a far different result. As he bore the image of God in his 
higher nature, he would have resembled Him, not only in 
knowledge, thus honorably acquired by resisting temptation, 
but also in moral good, thus realized in his own act and will. 
As it is, he has gained some knowledge in an unlawful and 
disastrous way ; but he has also taken in that moral evil, which 
is the image, not of God, but of the tempter, to whom he has 
yielded. — Dr . Murphy : “Genesis ” pp. 116-17. 

How Satan Prepares the Way to Adam’s Unbelief.— The temptation 
steps out from the area of cautious craft into that of a reckless 
denial of the truth of God’s prohibition, and a malicious suspi- 
cion of its object. Ye shall not die at all; thus is the truth of 
the threatening stoutly denied : that is, the doubt becomes un- 
belief. The way, however, is not prepared for the unbelief 
without first arousing a feeling of distrust in respect to God’s 
love, His righteousness, and even His power. Along with this, 
and entering with it, there must be also a proud self-confidence ; 
and a willful striving after a false independence. For the 
transition from doubt to unbelief the way is specially opened 
through a false security. The serpent denies all evil con- 
sequences as arising from the forbidden enjoyment, whilst he 
promises, on the contrary, the best and most glorious results 
from the same. 

For God doth Tcnow that in that day — The imitation of the 
Divine language contains a species of mockery. Your eyes, says 
the voice of the tempter, instead of closing in death, will be, 
for the first time, truly opened. Here it is to be remarked that 
the hour when unbelief is born is immediately the birth-hour of 
superstition. The serpent would have the woman believe, that 
on eating of that fruit she would become wonderfully enlight- 
ened, and, at the same time, raised to a divine glory. And so, in 
like manner, is every sin a senseless and superstitious belief 
in the salutary effects of sin. The promise of the tempter’s 
voice is first regarded for its own sake, and then as a complaint 
against God. Against the immediate deadly effect it sets the 
immediate pleasurable effect, whilst, at the same time, it repre- 


MORAL EYIL. 


269 


sents the condition of men hitherto as a lamentable one — as an 
existence with closed eyes. Against the fearful threatening , 
to die the death, it sets the opened eyes, and the being like 
God, as a caricaturing, as it were, of that promise which had 
appointed men to the image of God. 

Independence of Man Set Up. — The knowledge, however, of 
good and evil, as the words are employed by Satan, must 
here denote not merely a condition of higher intelligence* but 
rather a state of perfect independence of God. They would 
then know of themselves what was good and evil, and would no 
longer need the divine direction. To the same effect the assur- 
ance : for God doth iznow, etc. This must mean : He enviously 
seeks to keep back your happiness ; and he is envious because 
he is weak in opposition to nature, because the fruit of the 
forbidden tree will make you independent of Him, and because 
He is tyrannical and without love in his dealings with you. In 
this distorting of the Divine image, there is reflected the dark- 
ening of the divine consciousness which the temptation tends 
to call out in the woman, and actually does call out. In all this 
it must be noted, that the temptation here is already at work 
with those crafty lies which it has employed through the whole 
course of the world’s history — that is, with lies containing 
elements of the truth, but misplaced and distorted. Already 
that first question of the serpent contains a truth, so far as man 
ought to become conscious in himself of the certainty and divine 
suitableness of God’s commands. The doubt, however, which 
tends to life, is to be distinguished from that which tends to 
death, by its design and direction. The tendency of the devil 
is to scepticism. — Dr. Lange: “Genesis,” p. 229. 

Elements of Good and Evil Within Man. — Man’s soul carries in 
it the elements of all good, and of all evil — for every faculty 
has its good and its evil side ; its temperate and its excessive 
use ; and there is no outward evil in the world which is not 
made so by something which represents it in man. There is 
no evil under the general designation of sin , which has not its 
origin within. The soul of man lies open, like the Atlantic 
coast, to all the influences which beat in from the broad 
ocean. Whatever thing is good, whatever thing is true, what- 
ever thing beautiful, whatever there is noble in the realm and 
universe of God, is wafted in toward Him. And there is in 


270 


MORAL EYIL. 


man a susceptibility to elements of an opposite nature. What- 
ever there is evil, whatever there is selfish, or cruel or 
base, in all the realm of God’s universe, is wafted in toward 
him, and may beat upon him as a wave upon the shore. * * * 

The sacred Scripture declares that there is a power of temp- 
tation in evil spirits. If that is not taught in the word of God, 
nothing is taught. If it be not taught that there is a master- 
spirit of evil, and that there be minor spirits many, then it is 
not taught that there is a master-spirit of good which we call 
God, and angels many. And any interpretation which wrenches 
this truth out of the Bible, does not wrench the truth so much 
as it does the Bible, which it utterly destroys. For a like 
interpretation would take out of it anything and everything, 
and destroy all confidence in it as a book of direction, as a 
book of guidance. 

Temptation Analogous to Inspiration. — Temptation holds a 
parallel and analogic course with inspiration. It is simply a 
stimulus, coming from wherever it may, applied to a faculty, 
or to classes of faculties, in the human mind — faculties of 
which men have, or should have, might have, full control. 
Temptation never works out anything. It merely gives 
impulse, suggestion, stimulus. If any evil is wrought out 
through you, you work it out wholly and absolutely. No 
virtue is wrought out by the divine mind, and then deposited 
in the human soul. No conception is pictorially drawn, and 
then slid into the knowledge-chamber of the human mind 
already formed. The divine influence simply vivifies and 
impels the natural organism, by which God governs, and on 
which government stands. And so precisely is it with the 
converse, with the opposite. Malign influence is simply sug- 
gestive, stimulative. It merely impels. And if, being 
impelled, men do evil, as when, being impelled, they do right, 
the right or the wrong is their own act, for which they are 
responsible. For although they were pushed to it, tempted 
to it, they had plenary power to do it or not to do it. 

What Temptation Does, and How Wan Helps It On.— No man is 

carried away under temptation, or by temptation. Many men 
carry themselves away. No man is overborne by temptation in 
any literal sense, although figuratively the language is employed 
properly enough. Temptation does not destroy self-control. 


MORAL EYIL. 


271 


It may intensify its difficulty, but it does not invalidate plenary 
power. The strength of the temptation lies wholly in the fac- 
ulty which it tempts. Temptation goes with the strongest 
faculties. A man that is very benevolent is tempted to be 
wasteful and indiscriminate in the use of his means ; but a very 
stingy man is never tempted to be a spendthrift. A man of 
strong nature toward anger, is tempted to be angry; but a man 
that is perfectly cold, and cautious and self-possessed — the 
devil does not waste ammunition on him to make him angry ! 
If he be cold and pulseless in his nature, then he is tempted to 
wickedness that lies over in that direction — to the negatives, 
which are gigantic and mighty. Temptations go along turn- 
pikes in the human soul. Where broad, passions are, where 
broad tracks of power lie, where men will go if only pushed — 
that is where temptations ply. 

Every Attribute Finds its Opportunity.— Selfishness everywhere 
finds occasion for selfishness. Pride — why, the world is full of 
reasons why a man should be proud, if a man is only proud to 
start with. Frivolous and sinful vanity finds itself solicited 
into being on ten thousand occasions. An irritable man finds 
not only irritable men, but occasions for irritability. A quar- 
relsome man finds occasions to quarrel in every nook and 
corner. A discontented man — O, the jolts that are under his 
wheels ! The world is full of disturbances, and the disturbed 
man carries that which gathers all these elements. He centers 
them upon himself ; and he is open to them ; and they report 
themselves to him, and journalize themselves in his sensibility. 
Everywhere, not the trembling and broken waves flash back 
so many brilliant beams of sunlight from the face of the dis- 
turbed sea, as life flashes beams of vanity on one that is open 
— being strong in that tendency — to such suggestions and such 
temptations. Round about a man swarm hints of wickedness. 
And the man says : “I am tempted of the devil.” Yes ! and the 
devil knows where to tempt you. He sows his seed on ground 
that was prepared beforehand. He does not waste strength 
to touch torpid chords in you. He looks at you, and sees 
where you can be made to do evil ; and there it is that his 
fingers practice. — Beecher : Vol. 1 , pp. 245-51. 

Adam’s Fall and Our Fall. — It is true that we fell in Adam. It 
is also true that we fell in every act of sin, in every weakness 


272 


MORAL EYIL. 


and folly, of any subsequent child of Adam. We are all drawn 
downward by every sin ; we are lifted upward, too, by every 
act of heroic virtue, not by example only, but also by that 
mysterious influence, that subtile contagion, finer than anything 
visible, ponderable, or tangible — that effluence from eye, voice, 
tone, manner, which, according to the character which is behind, 
communicates an impulse of faith and courage, or an impulse 
of cowardice or untruth ; which may be transmitted onward, 
forward, on every side, like the widening circles in a disturbed 
lake — circles which meet and cross each other without disturb- 
ance, and whose influences may be strictly illimitable and 
infinite. * * * To me, the belief that I fell 

in Adam is not an opinion fraught only with sadness. This tide 
of life which comes pouring through me comes from ten thou- 
sand ancestors. All their sorrows and joys, temptations and 
struggles, sins and virtues, have helped to make it what it is. 
I am a member of a great body. I am willing to be so — to bear 
the fortunes and misfortunes of my race. 

No Cause in Me, no Accountability.— It is true that I find evil 
tendencies in me which I did not cause ; but I know, that, for 
whatever part I am not the cause, I am not accountable. For 
this part of my life I do not dread the wrath, but rather claim 
the pity, of my God. My nature I find to be diseased — not 
well ; needing cure, and not merely food and exercise. I can, 
therefore, the more easily believe that God has sent me a 
physician, and that I shall be cured by Him. I can believe 
in a future emancipation from these tendencies to vanity, 
sensuality, indolence, anger, willfulness, impatience, obstinacy : 
tendencies which are, in me, not crime, but disease ; and I can 
see how to say with Paul, “ Now, then, it is no more I that do 
it, but sin that dwelleth in me. 77 — James Freeman Clarice: 
u Orthodoxy ” pp. 137-9. 

Making Scapegoats of Our Circumstances.— I do not fancy any 
are so bold and bad as of deliberate intent to lay the guilt of 
their crimes on God. Yet what else, in fact, do they, who make 
a scapegoat of their circumstances — attributing their sins to 
constitutional temperament, or to the headlong power of their 
passions, or to the difficulties of their position, or to the sud- 
denness or the strength of their trials? These apologies, 
whether offered to men, or used to allay guilty fears, and quiet 


MORAL EVIL. 


273 


an uneasy conscience, throw the blame of sin on Providence ; 
and to throw the blame of it on Providence, is to throw it upon 
God. Excuses such as these but add to our guilt. They may 
now satisfy, or rather stupefy our conscience, but they shall 
stand us in no stead at the bar of him who neither tempts nor 
is tempted. He has left us without excuse. Assured that God 
will not suffer any, that seek Him, to be tempted above that 
they are able to bear, but will with the temptation also make a 
way of escape, we are without excuse; but not without a 
remedy. Blessed be God! the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth 
from all sin. 

The source of temptation is in ourselves . 

“Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own 
lust, and enticed.” 

The Magnet Illustrates TemptaticSi. — If you apply a magnet to 
the end of a needle that courses freely on its pivot, the needle, 
affected by a strange attraction, approaches as if it loved it. 
Beverse the order, apply the magnet now to the opposite end — 
to the other pole, and the needle shrinks away, trembling, as if 
it did not love, but hated it. So it is with temptation. One 
man rushes into the arms of vice ; another recoils from them 
with horror. Joseph starts back, saying, How can I do this 
great wickedness, and sin against God? What is loved by one, 
is loathsome in another’s eyes ; and according as the nature it 
addresses is holy or unholy, temptation attracts or repels ; gives 
pain or pleasure ; is loved or hated. It is our corrupt and evil 
passions that give its power to temptation. These are the 
combustibles it fires ; the quick and fiery powder, that a spark 
which a dewdrop had quenched, flashes into an explosion. 

In their visits to our world, the angels were exposed to 
temptation; but what harm did they suffer? Hone. Amidst 
wide-spread contagion, they never were infected; nor, as 
people import the plague from other countries, did they take 
sin away with them on their return to heaven, and spread the 
deadly pestilence in that sinless land. Can a man take fire in 
his bosom, and his clothes not be burned ? True ; yet angels 
suffered nothing from coming in contact with sinners; but 
passed among them as unstained as the sunbeam of their 
heavens through the murky air of our smoky cities. Like a 
flower that, brought from breezy hill or open moor, pines away 
amid the pent-up and poisened atmosphere of our towns, Lot’s 


274 


MORAL EYIL. 


graces were blighted by his residence in Sodom, it corrupted 
him, but not his heavenly visitors. — Dr. Guthrie : Man and the 
Gospel , pp. 50-1. 

The Vanity of Disputing Man’s Fall.— If the fall of man is 
disputed, we answer that, short of an optimism as superficial as 
it is untenable, it must be impossible to contest its misery and 
degradation. To all whose eyes are not blinded, man appears 
a being fallen and debased. He has his joys, his grandeurs, 
and gleams of nobility ; his miseries are the miseries of a lord 
of creation ; he is not a parvenu animal, but a being celestial 
and divine, fallen from his high estate, and still mindful of it. 
In spite of spring with its smile, and youth with its enchant- 
ment, in spite of short felicities and glowing dreams, we see 
the race panting under its load of suffering, till one by one its 
children yield up their breath in a last agony. For the 
majority of men existence is one long battle with hunger, in 
protracted ignorance and thankless labor. Bread is a conquest 
always dearly bought. To all death is preceded by a long 
procession of bodily ills, and to some it appears almost a 
remedy, so has their life been smitten and wounded. One 
mighty groan has been rising for six thousand years from this 
earth watered with sweat and tears. It is, as says the poet, 
the voice of men who weep ; they curse the day when they 
were born every time that a new stroke of destiny recalls them 
to the poignant verity of their situation. Doubtless, in the midst 
of all these woes, the chariot of progress advances, but there 
are stains of blood on its wheels, and we know but too well 
what it crushes in its course. Yain is it to seek for a smoother 
road; it must ever leave each generation on the sepulchral 
fields, in which the fairest discoveries of science cannot smooth 
a single furrow. Side by side with the sorrows of mankind 
are its crimes, its basenesses, explosions of hatred, fevers of 
voluptuousness. * # # # if thi s was the normal state of 
humanity, if this the primal work of God, what, then, is that 
God ? — Pressense : Life of Christ , pp. 23-4. 

Satan’s Presence of Little Importance.— As it is a question with 
many whether Satan appeared in person at the temptation of 
our Savior, or whether the narrative translates into an object- 
ive form a subjective history; so here, the same question 
is raised. To us, it has little practical importance. The chap- 


MORAL EVIL. 


275 


ter may be an embodiment of great moral truths in sensible 
imagery. It may have been that what is here described as a 
serpent appearing to the eye, represents the glittering and 
crafty suggestions made to the mind of Eve. But jf so, the 
Holy Spirit has seen fit to set it forth in an objective form, as 
the best means of conveying it to the human mind — as likely to 
be better grasped in this way than by any abstract form of con- 
ception and statement; and we have a right, therefore, to 
receive it as given. We see no good reason, however, for 
doubting the genuine historical character of the chapter. The 
method of conveying knowledge, even in an historical narra- 
tive, does not forbid a resort to those arts of speech by which 
abstract truth or extraordinary facts are conveyed to the mind 
in concrete form or in analogical representations. 

The introduction of a tempter is a very significant fact. 
Man was on trial, and the trial must accord in its nature with 
the character that is tested. It is a rational nature ; it must 
not be forced. But it may and must have free play between 
antagonistic influences. While all pure and true influences are 
brought to bear by his Creator, yet in such a way as not to 
interfere with self-sovereignty ; so it is allowable that evil and 
false influences shall play upon him, yet not in such a way as 
will force him into evil. But the important consideration here 
is, that these evil influences originate not with himself ; they come 
from without — they are the suggestions and allurements of a 
tempter. On this point Auberlen has well said : 

Auberlen’s Views. — “ Though the sin of humanity rests on a free 
act of Adam, yet it cannot have in this its ultimate ground. 
Everything that exists, and especially that which has person- 
ality, is attached by an intimate bond to its original. So must 
also the first human pair have been bound to God by a native 
trait of the deepest piety. They had, as Melancthon, in his 
defense of the Augsburg Confession, so beautifully says, a 
pure, good, joyous heart toward God and all divine things ; 
they lived in and from God, as the child lives in and from the 
mother. If now the the thought of breaking loose from God, 
of spiritual parricide, had risen in their souls, then would they, 
in their own inmost self, have set themselves in opposition to 
God; evil would have been a thing not foreign to the nature 
of man ; but man would have been the evil one himself— he 
would have satanized himself. But then, too, it would be 


276 


MORAL EVIL. 


impossible to remove evil from the nature of man; humanity 
would no longer be capable of redemption. Inasmuch, there- 
fore, as man is not a devil, it follows that there must be a 
devil. Evil in its human form, if it does not constitute the 
substance of the creaturely personality, and still leaves room 
for redemption, can be explained only through temptation.” 

Have we here a solution of the mystery that the fallen angels 
found no redeemer, while fallen man enlists the sympathy and 
help of heaven for his recovery ? 

Must Not Convey Our Modern Ideas Back to Adam. — In this 
temptation, there is no unusual, overpowering presence 
allowed, by which the parties on trial could be bereft of the 
free assertion of their own wills. Admitting that Satan — the 
mighty and crafty leader of rebellious angels — was the real 
tempter (see John viii : 44 ; II Cor. xi : 3 ; I John iii : 8 ; Eev. xii : 9, 
xx : 2), he approaches in the form of a serpent — an inferior crea- 
ture, whose presence could in no sense overawe Adam and 
Eve. We must be careful not to transfer to them our dread of 
serpents. They had, as yet, no reason to dread any of the 
creatures over whom they had been constituted sovereigns. 
Nor is there any reason to believe that the speaking of a ser- 
pent would, in their experience, be any more wonderful than a 
thousand other things. As yet, everything was wonderful. 
To the infant of to-day there are few things more attractive 
than a glittering serpent, with its curving motions, its brilliant 
colors, and the magnetic charm of its eye. It is a fit symbol 
of the devil in his sly, insidious approaches, his cunning, and 
the power to charm that precedes his power to destroy. 
While, through such a medium, Satan might disguise his pur- 
pose, it is evident that, no invasion could be made of the liberty 
of our first parents to choose for themselves. — Isaac Urrett. 

What the Fall of Adam Involved. — From all that we gather 
from the narrative, we conclude that the fall of man involved 
the loss of no faculty, the addition of no passion, to human 
nature. It introduced disorder among man’s faculties and 
powers ; the symmetry and harmony of his various powers were 
lost. The religious sentiment, which had been the crown of 
his being, is dashed from its supremacy ; self-will is exalted ; he 
is cast forth from that Presence which has been his life ; and, 
left to himself, his selfish passions, which had been but servants, 


MORAL EYIL. 


277 


become masters, and th & flesh gains control of the spirit. The 
original image is not entirely defaced, but it is sadly marred ; and 
it will not be restored until, through redemption, the spirit is 
again exalted to supremacy and the flesh brought into complete 
subordination. From this we may gather that in man’s re-gen- 
eration, there will be no new nature imparted, no new faculties 
added, but a readjustment of our disordered powers, such as 
will bring our whole nature again into submission to God’s will 
and into the fellowship of his love. Hence, as the steps of de- 
generation were, 1. Unbelief; 2. Disobedience; 3. Guilt; 4. 
Exile from God; 5. Death; so the steps of re- generation will 
be, 1. Faith; 2. Obedience; 3. Forgiveness; 4. Union with 
God ; 5. Everlasting life . — Isaac Errett. 

The Act of Sin. — Had He been so constituted that the lower 
wish was superior to the higher will, there would have been an 
act of sin; had the two been nearly balanced, so that the 
conflict hung in doubt, there would have been a tendency to 
sin — what we call a sinful nature. But it was in the entire and 
perfect subjugation of desire to the will of right that a sinless 
nature was exhibited. 

The Nature of Sin. — Here, then, is the nature of sin. Sin is 
not the possession of desires, but the having them in uncon- 
trolled ascendancy over the higher nature. Sinfulness does not 
consist in having strong desires or passions. In the strongest 
and highest natures, all, including the desires, is strong. Sin is 
not a real thing. It is rather the absence of a something, the 
will to do right. It is not a disease or taint, an actual 
substance projected into the constitution. It is the absence of 
the spirit which orders and harmonizes the whole ; so that 
what we mean when we say the natural man must sin inevitably 
is this — that he has strong natural appetites, and that he has 
no bias from above to counteract those appetites ; exactly as if a 
ship were deserted by her crew, and left on the bosom of the 
Atlantic with every sail set and the wind blowing. Ho one 
forces her to destruction ; yet on the rocks she will surely go, 
just because there is no pilot at the helm. Such is the state of 
ordinary men. Temptation leads to fall. The gusts of instinct, 
which, rightly guided, would have carried safely into port, dash 
them on the rocks. Ho one forces them to sin ; but the 
spirit-pilot has left the helm. Fallen Hature ! Sin, therefore, 


278 


MORAL EVIL. 


is not in the appetites, but in the absence of a controlling will. 
— F. W. Robertson : Vol. 1, pp. 132-3. 

Virtue is Something Resisted.— Good and evil we know in the 
field of this world grow up together almost inseparably ; and 
the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the 
knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances 
hardly to be discovered, that those confused seeds which were 
imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labor to cull out and sort 
asunder, were not more intermixed. It was from out the rind 
of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as 
two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And 
perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into, of having good 
and evil, that is to say, of knowing good by evil. As, therefore, 
the state of man now is, what knowledge can there be to 
choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of 
evil ¥ He that can apprehend and consider vice, with all her 
baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain and distinguish, 
and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfar- 
ing Christian. 

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised 
and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary 
but slinks out of the race, where the immortal garland is to be 
run for, not without dust and heat. * * * That virtue, 
therefore, which is but a youngling in the contemplation of 
evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her 
followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure ; her 
whiteness is but an excre mental whiteness ; which was the 
reason why our sage and serious poet, Spencer, describing true 
temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in, with his 
palmer, through the cave of Mammon, and the bower of earthly 
bliss, that he might see and know, and yet abstain . — John 
Milton: Flea for a Free Press. 

Why Are We Exposed to Temptation 1 — Why has God given us 
souls, and exposed us to sorrow, temptation and trial ¥ Sci- 
ence here is dumb; but the spirit of Christianity, which is 
identical with the profoundest breathings of our common 
human heart, replies : For discipline and preparation, for the 
formation of character, for the development of our individual 
personality, shall it be affirmed by science that not one particle 
of matter ever perishes ; that every elementary law operates 


MORAL EVIL. 


279 


and has operated unchanged through all worlds and all times 
And can we suppose, if we look not to the outward world 
alone, but blend with it the equally indisputable phenomena 
of that which is inward and invisible, that the highest and 
most wonderful reality in this universe — a devout, intelligent 
and loving soul — shall finally become extinct, and disappear 
with all that it once contained, amid the ceaseless flux and 
over-changing forms of elementary matter? No; religion 
gives us a better hope. This life will not prove one great frus- 
tration of all our aspirations after what is pure and noble and 
good. It is a school of discipline for us all ; yea, perchance 
oven for those whom we now regard as the meanest and the 
worst. We cannot believe that the great Parent Mind has 
made anything so great and noble as a human soul wholly in 
vain; and why has He scattered these seeds of moral and 
spiritual capacity so far and wide, if they are never to spring 
up and bear any fruit at all ? — John James Tayler : Christian 
Aspects of Faith and Duty, p. 318. 

God’s Government Not a Police Force. — “Is there not some 
chosen curse,” we say, “some hidden thunder to blast the 
wretch who violates all laws, human and divine ?” But suppose 
it were so. Suppose that the eternal retribution that dwells 
embosomed in the air around us, were to burst forth in thunder 
upon every atrocious crime. Suppose that the Infinite Intelli- 
gence were ever devising new penalties for guilty deeds. Or 
suppose that, by a general law, the lying lips were always smit- 
ten with an instant blow, or that there were a whip wielded by 
an invisible hand for every villain in the world. It might be no 
more than justice ; and you might say that the world would 
then be strictly governed. Yes ! But the government would 
then be a police, and not a providence. Human nature would 
break down under such a system of treatment. Men would be 
like slaves under the lash, and their virtue, mere terror and 
cowardice. Therefore, men are left slowly to learn the evil of 
their ways, and human wickedness is suffered to run far, that 
the experience of evil may be corrective, and contrition for it 
generous and sincere, and repentance deep and thorough. 
***** Does the man who stands in this modern 
world — do you and I, find anything in our life, that makes us 
prize it; anything that makes us feel that we had infinitely 
rather have it, than have it not? Doubtless we do, and other 


280 


MORAL EVIL. 


men do. All men do. I am satisfied that there is an almost 
universal overrating of the miseries of life, as compared with its 
blessings ; and that not one in a million of those whom we lament 
over as if their life was a misfortune, would thank us for our 
sympathy, or accept the conclusion that they had better not have 
existed at all. — Dr. Dewey : Problem of Human Destiny, pp. 30-46. 

Salvation a Progressive Development. — Salvation was not 
revealed all at once. The preparations for its full and final 
revelation extended over a period of four thousand years. 
Many are tempted to ask why. Why did not the Savior come 
at once and announce to the first sinners the same gospel that 
we find in the New Testament ? If we could not tell why, we 
are still compelled to accept the fact that it was not so done. 
The scientist, in exploring the fields of nature, finds that in build- 
ing a globe like that on which we live, God has patiently pro- 
gressed with His work through long geological periods. The man 
of science may not be able to tell why. He may conceive the 
possibility of Divine power accomplishing such a work instan- 
taneously ; but he is compelled to admit the fact of progressive 
development, whether he understands its philosophy or not. 
* * * * We can conceive the possibility of 

Omnipotence speaking worlds into being in an instant ; but we 
cannot with equal facility think of Omnipotence swaying 
rational natures, and compelling beings, who have a will of their 
own, to love and hate, obey and disobey, be good or evil, at a 
word of command. # * * * We have 

seen that salvation involves the restoration of the rebellious 
soul to loyalty — to delight in and fellowship with God. This, in 
its turn, involves choice on the part of the sinner — a voluntary 
turning from falsehood to truth, from sin to holiness. No such 
voluntary turning can take place until the sinner learns enough 
of the odious curse of sin to hate it, and is convinced of the 
beauty of holiness so as to desire it ; nor can it be until he has 
become so satisfied of his own impotence, as to be willing to 
accept the boon of salvation at the hands of another. He 
must learn in the school of experience. Time must be given 
for sin to develop itself in the history of the race, and for men 
to try their own remedial schemes. Only when like the 
prodigal, they have wasted their substance, exhausted their 
resources, and feel the pressure of utter despair, will they “come 
to themselves.” It required ages for the needful experiments 


MORAL EVIL. 


281 


of sinful man in government, philosophy, and religion, before 
the need of salvation could be suitably realized. We must 
regard these four thousand years, then, as given up to the 
various nations for experiment, until they should weary of their 
vain inventions. — Isaac Errett : Talks to Bereans , pp. 27-8. 

Sin a Kind of Insanity. — Sin is a kind of insanity. So far as it 
goes, it makes man an irrational creature ; it makes him a fooh 
The consummation of evil is, ever, and in every form, the 
extreme of folly. And it is that most pitiable folly which is 
puffed up with arrogance and self-sufficiency. Sin degrades, it 
impoverishes, it beggars the soul ; and yet the soul, in this very 
condition, blesses itself in its superior endowments and happy 
fortune. Yes ! Every sinner is a beggar ; as truly as the most 
needy and desperate mendicant. He begs for a precarious happi- 
ness. He begs it of his possessions or his coffers that cannot 
give it. He begs it of every passing trifle and pleasure. He 
begs it of things most empty and uncertain — of every vanity,, 
of every shout of praise in the vacant air ; of every wandering 
eye he begs its homage ; he wants these things ; he wants them 
for happiness ; he wants them to satisfy the craving soul ; and 
yet he imagines that he is fortunate ; he accounts himself wise, 
or great, or honorable or rich, increased in goods, and needing 
nothing. — Dr . Dewey : Vol. 1, p. 46. 

The Influences of Sin. — “God made man upright, but they have 
sought out many inventions.” Adam rebelled. The natural 
man became preternatural. The animal triumphed over the 
human elements of his nature. Sin was born on earth. The 
crown fell from his head. The glory of the Lord departed from 
him. He felt his guilt and trembled ; he saw his nakedness 
and blushed. The bright candle of the lord became a dimly- 
smoking taper. He was led to judgment. He wastried, con- 
demned to death, divested of his patrimonial inheritance, but 
respited from immediate execution. A prisoner of death, but 
permitted to roam abroad and at large till the King authorized 
his seizure and destruction. * * * * * The 

influence of sin upon God, our fellows and ourselves is various 
and multiform. It affects the heart, the conscience, the whole 
soul and body of man. It alienates our affections, and even 
works hatred in our minds both towards God and man. As an 
ancient adage says, “we hate those we have injured and having 


282 


MORAL EVIL. 


offended God our Father, we are for that very reason filled with 
enmity against him. Every sin wounds the affection of 
our heavenly Father. It insults and dishonors his law and 
authority in the estimation of his other subjects. It induces to 
new infractions and habitual violations of right. It destroys 
the utilityof law, and, if not subdued, would ultimately subvert 
the throne and government of God. It severs us from society 
by its morbid selfishness and disregard for man. It also op- 
presses and pollutes the conscience with its guilt and dread, and 
enslaves the passions as well as works the destruction of the 
body. If not restrained and put down, it would fill the universe 
with anarchy and disorder — with universal misery and ruin. — 
A. Campbell. 

Channing’s Conception of Sin. — Sin, in its true sense, is the 
violation of duty, and cannot, consequently, exist before con- 
science has begun to act, and before power to obey it is 
unfolded. To sin is to resist our sense of right, to oppose 
known obligation, to cherish feelings or commit deeds which 
we know to be wrong. It is to withhold from God the rever- 
ence, gratitude and obedience which our own consciences pro- 
nounce to be due to that great and good Being. It is to trans- 
gress those laws of equity, justice, candor, humanity, disinter 
estedness, which we all feel to belong and to answer to our 
various social relations. It is to yield ourselves to those 
appetites which we know to be the inferior principles of our 
nature, to give the body a mastery over the mind, to sacrifice 
the intellect and heart to the senses, to surrender ourselves to 
ease and indulgence, or to prefer outward accumulation and 
power to strength and peace of conscience, to progress 
towards perfection. Such is sin. It is voluntary wrong-doing. 
Any gratification injurious to ourselves is sin. Any act injuri- 
ous to our neighbor is sin. Indifference to our Creator is sin. 
The transgression of any command which this excellent Being 
and rightful Sovereign has given us, whether by conscience or 
revelation, is sin . — Charming : p. 347. 

Sin as a Battlefield. — We call you to the battlefield of sin. We 
show you the vestiges. This we say is man, the fallen princi- 
pality. In these tragic desolations of intelligence and genius, 
of passion, pride and sorrow, behold the import of his eternity. 
Be no mere spectator, turn the glass we give you round upon 


MORAL EYIL. 


283 


yourself, look into the ruin of your own conscious spirit, and 
see how much it signifies, both that you are a sinner and a man. 
Here, within the souPs gloomy chamber, the loosened passions 
rage and chafe, impatient of their law; here huddle on the 
wild and desultory thoughts ; here the imagination crowds in 
shapes of glory and disgust, tokens both and mockeries of its 
own creative power, no longer in the keeping of reason ; here 
sits remorse scowling and biting her chain ; here creep out the 
fears, a meagre and pale multitude ; here drives on the will in 
his chariot of war; here lie trampled the great aspirations, 
groaning in immortal thirst ; here the blasted affections, weep- 
ing out their life in silent injury: all that you see without, in 
the wars, revenges and the crazed religions of the world, is 
faithfully represented in the appalling disorders of your own 
spirit. And yet, despite all this, a fact which overtops and 
crowns all other evidence, you are trying and contriving still 
to be happy — a happy ruin ! The eternal destiny is in you, and 
you cannot break loose from it . — Horace Bushnell : Sermons for 
a New Life, p. 69. 

Nature of Sin is Disorder. — As it is the very nature of sin to 
bring disorder into the creation of God, so its natural conse- 
quences are pernicious to the sinful creature. Every act of 
willful sin tends to deface the moral image of God in the soul, 
and ruin the best part of his workmanship. It warps the mind 
aside from its chief good, and turns the heart away from God, 
and all that is holy. Sin forms itself in the heart into an evil 
principle and habit of disobedience; one sin makes way for 
another, and increases the wretched trade of sinning.— Hr. 
Watts : Of the Evil of Sin . 

A Beautiful Figure.— I have seen the little purls of a spring 
sweat through the bottom of a bank and intenerate the stubborn 
pavement, till it hath made it fit for the impression of a child’s 
foot; and it was despised, like the descending pearls of a misty 
morning, till it had opened its way and made a stream large 
enough to carry away the ruins of the undermined strand, and 
to invade the neigboring gardens ; but then the despised drops 
were grown into an artificial river, and an intolerable mischief. 
So are the first entrances of sin stopped with the antidotes of 
a hearty prayer, and checked into sobriety by the eye of a 
reverend man, or the counsels of a single sermon ; but when 


284 


MORAL EVIL. 


such beginnings are neglected, and our religion hath not in it 
so much philosophy as to think any thing evil as long as we can 
endure it, they grow up to ulcers and pestilential evils ; they 
destroy the soul by their abode, who at their first entrance 
might have been killed with the pressure of a little finger. — 
Jeremy Taylor . 

No Necessary Evil.— As surely as God is good so surely there 
is no such thing as necessary evil. For by the religious mind, 
sickness and pain and death are not to be accounted evils. Moral 
evils are of your own making; and undoubtedly the greater 
part of them may be prevented. Deformities of mind, as of 
body, will sometimes occur. Some voluntary cast-aways there 
will always be, whom no fostering kindness and no parental 
care can preserve from self-destruction; but if any are lost for 
want of care and culture, there is a sin of omission in the 
society to which they belong. It is certain that all the evils 
in society arise from want of faith in God, and of obedience to 
His laws ; and it is no less certain that by the prevalence of a 
lively and efficient belief they would all be cured. — Robert 
Southey . 

Nothing hut Sin Deserves the Name of Evil. — Pain and sick- 
ness, shame and reproach, poverty and old age, nay, death 
itself, considering the shortness of their duration, and the 
advantage we may reap from them, do not deserve the name 
of evils. A good mind may bear up under them with fortitude 
and with cheerfulness of heart. The tossing of a tempest does 
not discompose him, which he is sure will bring him to a joyful 
harbor. — Addison : Spectator , No. 381. 

Sin Grows Stronger. — Every sin the oftener it is committed, 
the more it acquireth in the quality of evil ; as it succeeds in 
time, so it proceeds in degrees of badness ; for as they proceed 
they ever multiply, and, like figures in arithmetic, the last 
stands for more than all that went before it. — Sir T. Browne : 
Relig. Med., Pt. 1, 42. 

Retaliate. — Use sin as it will use you ; spare it not, for it will 
not spare you ; it is your murderer, and the murderer of the 
world ; use it, therefore as a murderer, should be used. Kill it 
before it kills you ; and though it kill your bodies it shall not be 
able to kill your souls. And though it bring you to the grave, 
as it did your Head, it shall not be able to keep you there. — 
Baxter. 


MORAL EVIL. 


285 


Sin and Hedgehogs Similar. — Sin and hedgehogs are born 
without spikes, but how they wound and prick after their birth 
we all know. The most unhappy being is he who feels remorse 
before the deed and c brings forth a sin already furnished 
with teeth in its birth, the bite of which is soon prolonged into 
an incurable wound of the conscience. — Richter . 

The Touch and Tincture go Together.— Sin taken into the soul, 
is like a liquor poured into a vessel ; so much of it as it fills, it' 
also seasons ; the touch and tincture go together ; so that 
although the body of the liquor should be poured out again, 
yet still it leaves that tang behind it.— South. 

Like Whom 1— Man-like is it to fall into sin ; fiend-like is it to 
dwell therein ; Christ-like is it for sin to grieve ; God-like is it 
all sin to leave. — Longfellow . 

Sin the Opposite to Wine.— ’Sin is not like wine, that gets better 
by being kept; it gets worse and worse. All the impure 
thoughts of your life have left their mark on your soul. Though 
a bad thought passed through your mind thirty years ago, its 
vileness is there yet. If you have had one thousand unclean 
thoughts which you would not have any one know, those one 
thousand thoughts are all rankling, festering and befouling your 
soul. * . * * Sin is a carrion bird that has strewn its nest with 
foulness. I only take the Bible imagery when I say that your 
heart, unchanged, is a sepulchre, reeking and stenchful with 
corruption. Water cannot wash it off. Fire cannot burn it. 
Sin has cursed you through and through. It is a leprosy. 
* * * It is a black, a horrible, a damning thing. It is not 
satisfied until it has pushed the soul into an eternal prison- 
house, and slammed shut the door, and shoved the bolts, and 
turned the locks of an everlasting incarceration. — Talmage : 
Yol. 1 ,pp. 137-8. 

Human Nature Wounded. — Human nature, in spite of itself, 
bears witness to the depth of its own wound. There can, one 
would think, be no question about this. Every form of ancient 
civilization bears evident token of sin, and also of the con- 
sciousness of sin. # # # The hideous forms of sacrifice 
which confront us in many quarters are doubtless to be inter- 
preted thus. — Stanley Leathes : Religion of the Christ , p. 7. 


MAN 


cgjM'AN, Lord of the Earth.— Geology may be said to have 
<555^ searched out the mode of development of a world. 
Yet it can point to no physical cause of that prophecy of Man 
which runs through the whole history ; which was uttered by 
the winds and waves at their work over the sands, by the 
rocks in each movement of the earth’s crust, and by every 
living thing in the long succession, until Man appeared to make 
the mysterious announcements intelligible. For the body 
of Man was not made more completely for the service of the 
soul, than the earth, in all its arrangements from beginning to 
end, for the spiritual being that was made to occupy it. In 
Man, the bones are not merely the jointed framework of an 
animal, but a framework shaped throughout with reference to 
that erect structure which befits and can best serve Man’s 
spiritual nature. The feet are not the clasping and climbing 
feet of a monkey ; they are so made as to give firmness to the 
tread and dignity to the bearing of the being made in God’s 
image. The hands have that fashioning of the palm, fingers, 
and thumb, and that delicacy of the sense of touch, which 
adapt them not only to feed the mouth, but to contribute to the 
wants of the soul and obey its promptings. The arms are not 
for strength alone, for they are weaker than in many a brute, 
but to give the greater power and expression to the thoughts 
that issue from within. The face, with its expresssive features, 
is formed so as to respond not solely to the emotions of 
pleasure and pain, but to shades of sentiment and interacting 
sympathies the most varied, high as heaven andlowas earth, ay, 
lower, in debased human nature. And the whole being, body, 
limbs, and head, with eyes looking, not toward the earth, but 
beyond an infinite horizon, is a majestic expression of the 
divine feature in Man, and of the infinitude of his aspirations. 

So with the earth, Man’s world-body. Its rocks were so 
arranged, in their formation, that they should best serve Man’s 
purposes. The strata were subjected to metamorphism, and so 


MAN. 


287 


crystallized that he might be provided with the most perfect 
material for his art — his statues, temples and dwellings ; at the 
same time they were filled with veins, in or(Jer to supply him 
with gold and silver and other treasures. The rocks were also 
made to enclose abundant beds of coal and iron ore, that Man 
might have fuel for his hearths and iron for his utensils and 
machinery. Mountans were raised to temper hot climates, to 
diversify the earth’s productiveness, and, pre-eminently, to gather 
the clouds into river-channels, thence to moisten the fields for 
agriculture, afford facilities for travel, and supply the world 
with springs and fountains. 

The continents were clustered mostly in one hemisphere to 
bring the nations into closer union ; and the two having cli- 
mates and resources the best for human progress — the northern 
Orient and Occident — were separated by a narrow ocean, that 
the great mountains might be on the remoter borders of each, 
and all the declivities, plains and rivers be turned toward one 
common channel of intercourse. So, also, the species of life, 
both of plants and animals, were appointed to administer to 
Man’s necessities, moral as well as physical. 

Physical and Human Laws Mutual. — Besides these beneficent 
provisions, the forces and laws of Nature were particularly 
adapted to Man, and Man to those laws, so that he should be 
able to take the oceans, rivers and winds into his service, and 
even the more subtle agencies, heat, light and electricity ; and 
the adjustments were made with such precision that the face 
of the earth is actually fitted hardly less than his own to 
respond to his inner being ; the mountains to his sense of the 
sublime ; the landscape, with its slopes, its trees, its flowers, 
to his love of the beautiful, and the thousands of living species, 
in their diversity, to his various emotions and sentiments. 
The whole world, indeed, seems to have been made almost a 
material manifestation, in multitudinous forms, of the elements 
of his own spiritual nature, that it might thereby give wings to 
the soul in its heavenward aspirings. It may therefore be said 
with truth that Man’s spirit was considered in the ordering of 
the earth’s structure as well as in that of his own body. 

It is hence obvious that the earth’s history, which it is the 
the object of Geology to teach, is the true introduction to human 
history. 


288 


MAN. 


It is also certain that science, whatever it may accomplish in 
the discovery of causes or methods of progress, can take no 
steps towards setting aside a Creator. Far from such a result, 
it clearly proves that there has been not only an omnipotent 
hand to create, and to sustain physical forces in action, but an 
all-wise and beneficent Spirit to shape all events toward a 
spiritual end. 

Man may well feel exalted to find that he was the final pur- 
pose when the word went forth in the beginning : Let light 
be. And he may thence derive direct personal assurance that 
all this magnificent preparation is yet to have a higher fulfill- 
ment in a future of spiritual life. This assurance from nature 
may seem feeble. Yet it is at least sufficient to strengthen 
faith in that Book of books in which the promise of that life 
and “the way” are plainly set forth. — Prof. James D. Dana : 
Text-book of Geology, pp. 342-5. 

Man a Spiritual Being. — With the creation of man a new era 
in geological history opens. In earliest time only matter 
existed — dead matter. Then appeared life , unconscious life in 
the plant, conscious and intelligent life in the animal. Ages 
rolled by, with varied exhibitions of animal and vegetable life. 
Finally Man appeared, a being made of matter and endowed 
with life, but more than this, partaking of a spiritual nature. 
The systems of life belong essentially to time; but Man, 
through his spirit, to the opening and infinite future. Thus 
gifted, Man is the only being capable of reaching toward a 
knowledge of himself, of nature, or of God. He is, hence, 
the only being capable of conscious obedience or disobe- 
dience of any moral law, the only one subject to deg- 
radation through excesses of appetite and violation of moral 
law, the only one with the will and power to make nature’s 
forces his means of progress. — Prof. James D. Dana: Ibid , p. 
241. 

Man Distinct from the Animal Creation.— Like all organic and 
living beings, man has a body. This body will furnish a first 
class of characters— the physical characters. Like animals, 
man is endowed with instinct and intelligence. Though infi- 
nitely more developed in him, these characters are not changed 
in their fundamental nature. They appear in the different 
human groups in phenomena, sometimes very different, as for 


MAN. 


289 


instance the different languages. The differences of manifes- 
tation of this intelligence will constitute the second class of 
characters — the intellectual characters. 

Finally, it is established that man has two grand faculties, of 
which we find not even a trace among animals. He alone has 
the moral sentiments of good and evil; he alone believes in a 
future existence succeeding this actual life ; he alone believes 
in beings superior to himself, that he has never seen, and that 
are capable of influencing his life for good or evil. 

In other words, man alone is endowed with morality and 
religion. These two faculties are revealed by his acts, by his 
institutions, by facts that differ from one group to another, 
from one race to another. From these is drawn a third class 
of characters — that of moral and religious characters. — Prof . 
Quatrefages : Popular Science Monthly , March 3 1873. 

Men and Monkeys Contrasted. — Let me say in what all men 
agree, and in what all differ from monkeys. All men agree 
in having four limbs, one pair of which terminates with 
feet, and the other pair terminates with hands — all men are 
endowed with the ability of standing erect; and their constitu- 
tion is such that the erect position is not one resulting from 
education, is not the result of successive change, but is one of 
the constitutive peculiarities of the human frame. The whole 
backbone is so organized that man can carry with ease his 
heavy, broad head only in a vertical position. He has not, as 
animals have, a ligament with which he may support the head in a 
horizontal position with ease ; but the head must be balanced 
on the top of the vertical column, in order that it may be 
moved with facility in every direction. Then man has limbs on 
the side of the chest so organized that he can move them in 
every direction and touch every part of his body with them. 
And that pair of limbs terminate with the most perfect hand 
known in nature ; and that hand is so constituted as rapidly to 
carry out the mandate of the mind. It is brought into the ser- 
vice of the intellect, and is no longer an organ of locomotion 
as is the case with the monkey. All these peculiarities are 
characteristic of all men, and between monkeys and men there 
is no structural transition— there is no gradation. From the 
highest monkey to the lowest race of men, all these attempts 
at bringing man closer to the monkey by lower types of 
humanity, overlook these fundamental differences, which make 


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man, however low and inferior, a man, and which separate him 
from the monkey, however as a monkey he may stand. — 
Agassiz : Tribune-Extra , No. 14. 

The Anatomy of a Man.— The human frame diverges from the 
structure of the brutes in the direction of greater physical 
helplessness and weakness — a divergence which it is most 
impossible to ascribe to mere Natural Selection. The unclothed 
and unprotected condition of the human body, its comparative 
slowness of foot, the absence of teeth adapted for prehension 
or defense, the same want of power for similar purposes in the 
hands and lingers, the bluntness of the sense of smell, such as 
to render it useless for the detection of prey which is concealed 
— all these are features which stand in strict and harmonious 
relation to the mental powers of man. But, apart from these, they 
would place him at an immense disadvantage in the struggle 
for existence. * * * The lowest degree of intelli- 

gence which is now possessed by the lowest savage is not 
more than enough to compensate him for the weakness of his 
frame. If that frame was once more bestial, it may have been 
better adapted for a bestial existence; but it is impossible to 
conceive how it could ever have emerged from that existence 
by virtue of Natural Selection. Man must have had human 
proportions of mind before he could afford to lose bestial 
proportions of body. If the change in mental power came 
simultaneously with the change in physical organization, then 
it was all that we can ever know or understand of a new 
creation. — Argyll : Primeval Man , pp. 45-70. 

Man, though living in physical Nature, is not of her, but 
belongs to a higher order of existences than those, born of her 
womb, and submissive to her dictates. — G. P. Marsh: Man and 
Nature. 

Mail a Microcosm, — Man himself presents a microcosm of mat- 
ter and force, raised to a higher plane than that of the merely 
chemical and physical. In him we find not merely that brain 
and nerve force which is common to him and lower animals, and 
which exhibits one of the most marvellous energies in nature, 
but we have the higher force of will and intellect, enabling him 
to read the secrets of nature, to seize and combine and utilize 
its laws like a god, and like a god to attain to the higher dis- 
cernment of good and evil. Nay, more, this power which 


MAN. 


291 


resides within man rules with omnipotent energy the material 
organism, driving its nerve forces until cells and fibres are worn 
out and destroyed, taxing muscles and tendons till they break, 
impelling its slave the body, even to that which will bring injury 
and death itself. 

Surely, what we thus see in man must be the image and like- 
ness of the Great Spirit. We can escape from this conclusion 
only by one or other of two assumptions, either of which is 
rather to be called a play upon words than a scientific theory. 
We may, with a certain class of physicists and physiologists, 
confine our attention wholly to the fire and the steam, and over- 
look the engineer. We may assume that with protoplasm and 
animal electricity, for example, we may dispense with life, and 
not only with life, but with spirit also. Yet he who regards 
vitality as an unmeaning word, and yet speaks of “living pro- 
toplasm,” and “ dead protoplasm,” and affirms that between 
these two states, so different in their phenomena, no chemical 
or physical difference exists, is surely either laughing at us, or 
committing himself to what the Duke of Argyll calls a philo- 
sophical bull ; and he who shows us that electrical discharges 
are concerned in muscular contractions has just as much 
proved that there is no need of life or spirit, as the electrician 
who has explained the mysteries of the telegraph has shown 
that there can be no need of an operator. Or we may, turning 
to the opposite extreme, trust to the metaphysical fallacy of 
those who affirm that neither matter, nor force, nor spirit, need 
concern them, for that all are merely states of consciousness 
in ourselves. But what of the conscious self— this self which 
thinks, and which is in relation with surroundings which it did 
not create, and which presumably did not create it? and 
what is the unknown third term which must have been the 
means of setting up these relations ? Here, again, our blind 
guides involve us in an absolute self-contradiction. Thus we 
are thrown back on the grand old truth that man, heathen and 
savage, or Christian and scientific, opens his eye on nature, and 
reads therein both the physical and the spiritual, and, in connec- 
tion with both of these, the power and divinity of an Almighty 
Creator. — Dr. J. W. Dawson : Earth and Man, pp. 345-7. 

Darwin’s Principles Subjected to Criticism.— Neither the scientific 
principle of what is called the “correlation of forces,” nor the 
Darwinian law of selection, seems to throw the smallest glimpse 


292 


MAN. 


of light on the origin of human free-will, and that sense of 
responsibility of which free will is the absolute condition. As 
for the Darwinian law, it is simply inconceivable, supposing you 
deny free-will to the lower types of organic beings, out of whichr 
on his conception, the higher species are gradually elaborated by 
natural selection, that an accidental variation should introduce 
free-will. * * * It is inconceivable that any law of transmis- 

sion should introduce an element of freedom which was entirely 
absent from the universe before. All that is supposed to vary 
in the qualities derived from ancestors is the proportion in 
which they are mingled, and, so to say, the mode of application 
to the universe outside. But that a necessary being should 
give birth to a being with any amount, however limited, of moral 
freedom is infinitely less conceivable than that parents of the 
insect or fish type should give birth to a perfect mammal. An 
accidental variation only means a variation of which you 
cannot determine the direction ; but you can determine that 
the direction of variation will not outrage all the laws 
of parentage. * * * * If all the lower laws of 

force and life are absolutely fixed and inviolable, then they 
cannot revoke their own constitution when they issue out 
of the region of physiology into that of moral life. If it be the 
essence of all things to follow fixed laws, if there is nothing but 
unchangeable force molding the universe by its gradually con- 
centrating strength, then the conscience of man is a delusion,, 
and his sense of responsibility and freedom must be explained 
away. * * * * The logic of science is consistent,, 

but it does not explain freedom. We know that we are morally 
free ; and we know that a free person cannot be the issue 
of helplessly unfolded laws. Only if the observed necessity 
has been the “must” of a Divine free-will, can that “must” be 
withdrawn, and freedom restored wherever the materials for 
self-determination have been granted. The identity of all the 
sciences is assumed only at the expense of the falsification of 
some, and the total abrogation of one. The main facts of man’s 
moral nature — all those on which the great interests of man- 
kind center, all which are the life of reverence and love — are 
swept away into meaningless unreality by the absolute identifi- 
cation of moral science with the natural sciences on the sum- 
mit of which it stands. It is dangerous enough to scientific 
reality to confuse intelligence with instinct and to describe 


MAN. 


293 


memory as a “weak form” of perception ; but it is the suicide of 
a science to manufacture a theory of moral obligation out of 
the materials of physical necessity — a theory of vision for the 
blind . — Richard Holt Hutton : Essays , Vol. 1, p. 64. 

Something Greater than a Nervous System for the Production of a 
Moral Nature. — To whatever extent we may be ready to admit the 
•dependence of our Mental operations upon the organization 
and functional activity of our Nervous System, we must also 
admit that there is something beyond and above all this, to 
which, in the fully-developed and self-regulating Intellect, that 
activity is subordinated: whilst, in rudely trampling on the 
noblest conceptions of our Moral Nature as mere delusions, 
the purely Materialistic hypothesis is so thoroughly repugnant 
fo the intuitive convictions of Mankind in general, that those 
who really experience these are made to feel its fallacy, with a 
•certainty that renders logical proof unnecessary. — Hr. Carpen- 
ter: Mental Physiology, p. 6. 

Man Defined as an Intelligence Served by Organs.— Man has 
been defined as an Intelligence served by organs; and 
his reasoning intelligence is a characteristic that separates 
him from the brute creation by a chasm that they can never 
cross. The contrast is most striking when the human mind is 
•directed to a point where the instinct of an animal is exhibited 
In the highest perfection. Only by the refined and severe 
method of the calculus was it ascertained that to secure the 
most room and strength upon a given space, with the least 
waste of material, the builder must adopt the exact angles 
which the bee forms by instinct. But how much greater the 
mind of Newton that grasped the principles, and defined the 
laws, and gave the rules of calculation, than the instinct of the 
bee in doing its work. 

Man’s Mind Contrasted With the Animal’s.— How much greater 
the mind of Michael Angelo shaping St. Peter’s to his thought, 
and then crystallizing the conception into stone, than the 
instinct of the bee building its cell ! Whence came the mind 
of Newton, the mind of Michael Angelo I Was this developed 
upward from the instinct of the bee? or was it a created intel- 
ligence, the offspring of God ? And what shall we say of this 
mind of man? — its power of reasoning, which grasps the facts 
of the external world and the truths of the inner world of 


294 


MAN. 


consciousness, and weaves them into consecutive chains of 
ideas, and builds up fabrics of thought that will stand though 
the physical universe shall fall? — the Mind which hides itself 
within its net-work of nerve and sinew and muscle, like an 
invisible spider, alive to the least touch or approach from with- 
out, quick to seize upon and appropriate as its food whatever 
comes within its range, throwing out new filaments to bind 
each floating atom of the real world, and then spinning from 
its mysterious depths a new world of thought and imagination^, 
of ethereal texture and prismatic beauty, itself the living center 
of the whole I What shall we say of this Mind that, from a 
few arbitrary characters and a few articulate sounds, con- 
structs a language that expresses thought, that stirs emotion* 
that kindles passions or allays them — language that makes the 
printed page glow with the fire and beauty of poetry, that 
makes the air pulsate with the throbs of eloquence ? this Mind 
that from a few arbitrary figures, that you may count upon 
your fingers, constructs the abstract science of mathematics,, 
by which it weighs the mountains in scales and the hills in a 
balance ; by which it measures the velocity of light and the 
distances and magnitudes of the stars? — this Mind of Man 
that, with unfaltering confidence, determines by mathematical 
law that the equilibrium of our solar system demands the 
existence of another planet yet unseen, then points the 
telescope and finds it where it ought to be ?— this Mind that 
takes the wings of the morning and out-travels light; that 
flies backward to the beginning and forward to the unknown ; 
that counts all time and space its home, and dares look forth 
upon the Infinite 1 

Greater Than the World Itself.— From a few letters of the 
alphabet Homer made a poem whose rhythm still beats upon the 
shores of Time, while the sea washes a desolate beach where 
Troy once stood ; Plato gave shape to thoughts that live, while 
Athens is falling to decay ; the creations of mind survive* 
though the temples and pyramids perish; and though the 
heavens should pass away, and the stars be seen no more, the 
system of mathematical order and beauty that Newton formed 
from a few abstract lines and numbers, would remain for the 
admiring contemplation of the Mind, overarching it with a 
firmament of its own. This Mind of Man, with its powers of 
Reason, Imagination, Memory, Will— with its hopes and fears, 


MAN. 


295 


its joys and loves — this Mind that Jcnpws itself , and that 
dominates all matter and all life without itself — can it be less 
than the immediate offspring of God? — Dr. J. P. Thompson : 
Genesis and Geology , p. 69. 

Ideas are the Real Substances.— Nature, acting like a vast 
power-loom, may work up her materials upon some general 
plan of structure with varieties of form ; but the loom 
does not originate either the structure or its varieties; 
it simply works up the materials that are put into it, 
according to the patterns devised and set up by the 
creative mind. Plato was right in counting the divine ideas 
the real substances, and those conceptions which originate 
in the intelligent will of God, Nature, acting as His 
power-loom, must work up according to the pattern. She 
cannot, of herself, pass from one to another, for Nature is 
under law to the will of her Creator. Hence, as a leading 
naturalist has said u the resemblances between the skeletons 
of Man and the Apes may, to the initiated in science, appear 
to make the transition by development feasible, yet they are 
of no weight as argument, since the question is as to the fact 
whether, under Nature’s laws, such a transition has taken place 
as the gradual change of an ape into a Man, or whether apes 
were made to be, and, remain apes.” There is no evidence 
whatever from any half-and-half specimens, or from any traces 
in organic remains, of such a gradation from the gorilla up to 
the human organism. The gap between the two is still 
immense ; and homologies are no part of the fact of a transi- 
tion from one to the other in the remote ages of the past. The 
theory of such a transition will not explain the amazing 
differences between Man and the lower creation. The strongest 
advocates of gradation do not pretend that any remains have 
been found of a human being intermediate between men and 
apes ; or that take our race down appreciably nearer to that 
lower form of animal existence. A union now of the so-called 
transmuted species with its original could only issue in a 
monstrum horrendum , informe, ingens. — Dr. J. P. Thompson : 
Genesis and Geology , p. 56. 

Whence Man’s Origin? — But what should be our final verdict as 
to the main question here considered — that of the origin of 
man ? We have seen that no arguments adduced by any of the 


206 


MAN. 


writers quoted suffice to make probable his origin from speech- 
less, irrational, non-moral brutes. But there is evidence to be 
adduced from high authority directly on the other side. No 
less a writer than Mr. Wallace, the independent originator and 
by far the best expounder of the theory of natural selection, 
differs widely from Mr. Darwin as to the question of man’s 
origin. He contends that some special agency was needed to 
produce the human frame. He specially adverts to the 
peculiar disposition of the hair on man, especially that naked- 
ness of the back which is common to all races of men, and to 
the peculiar construction of the foot and hand. He tells us 
“the hand of man contains latent capacities and powers which 
are unused by savages, and must have been even less used by 
palaeolithic man and his still ruder predecessors. It has all the 
appearance of an organ prepared for the use of civilized man, 
and one which was required to render civilization possible.” 
Again, speaking of the “wonderful power, range, flexibility and 
sweetness of the musical sounds producible by the human 
larynx,” he adds : “The habits of savages give no indication of 
how this faculty could have been developed,” * * * 

“the singing of savages is a more or less monotonous howling, 
and the females seldom sing at all.” # # # “It 

seems as if the organ had been prepared in anticipation of the 
future progress of man, since it contains latent capacities 
which are useless to him in his earlier condition ” (Natural 
Selection, pp. 332-360). — Mivart: Lessons from Nature , pp. 
185-6. 

He Differs Fundamentally from Every Creature.— The lesson, then, 
concerning man, which we seem to gather from nature, as 
revealed to us in our own consciousness, and as externally 
observed, is that man differs fundamentally from every other 
creature which presents itself to our senses. That he differs 
absolutely, and therefore differs in origin also. # # # 

He is manifestly “animal,” with the reflex functions, feelings, 
desires and emotions of an animal. Yet equally manifest is it 
that he has a special nature, “looking before and after,” which 
constitutes him rational. Buling, comprehending, interpreting 
and completing much in nature, we also see in him that which 
manifestly points above nature. — Mivart: Ibid , p. 190. 

Man’s Compound Nature. — The compound nature of man — his 
relation to the universe of matter and the universe of spirit — 


MAN. 


297 


is more fully set forth. His body is formed from the dust of 
the ground, but his spirit is divinely inbreathed : “ And the 
Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed 
into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living 
.soul.” There is thus a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the 
Almighty giveth him understanding (Job xxxii: 8) ; so that we 
are taught more than the beasts of the earth and made wiser 
than the fowls of heaven (Job xxxv: 11), for he hath put 
wisdom in the inward parts, and given understanding to the 
heart (Job xxxviii : 36). This incarnation of spirit, this union 
of matter and mind, gives to man a peculiar place in the universe 
— a place “ a little lower than the angels,” but a place of sov- 
ereignty over all material things. In the perfection of his 
nature there was perfect harmony between flesh and spirit — 
the impulses and the energies of the former being under the 
direction of the latter, and each passion of the flesh and faculty 
of the mind accomplishing its own function and contributing 
to the general good, under the supreme control of the religious 
nature, to which the Creator gave the throne and the scepter. 
############* 

No Substitute for Home. — The bestowal of a home on man in 
u beautiful garden, or park, and the work laid upon him “to 
dress it and to keep it,” suggests that man’s happiness, even in 
an unfallen state, involved (1) a home, (2) employment. How 
much the well-being of society depends on these two consider- 
ations, no one can tell. Certain it is that the absence of home 
attachments, a withdrawal or banishment from home influences, 
the decay of home affections— these, associated with idleness, 
eonstitute a fruitful source of lawlessness, vice and crime. It 
is a diseased condition of human nature that seeks a substi- 
tute for home relations and enjoyments ; nor is it less indicative 
of a diseased condition when we look upon labor as a curse, 
and seek to make a living in some other way lhan by honest 
industry. Labor is not a curse entailed by the fall. It was one 
of man’s delights, and one of the conditions of his healthful 
development, when he was upright, as God made him. Let me 
be thankful for all the sweet sanctities of home, and for active 
employment, and may I always endeavor to combine fervency 
of spirit with diligence in business. 

Primeval Happiness. — The happiness of man in his primeval 
innocence, must have been of a high order. The bounding joy- 


293 


MAN. 


ousness of perfect health ; his conscious sovereignty over the 
earth and its inhabitants ; the exercise of his mind and heart in 
the study of the perfections of God’s works and in tracing the 
minute and wonderful adaptations of one thing to another, and 
of all to man ; the continual accumulations of knowledge, as 
world after world of beauty and glory was unfolded to him in 
the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms ; the charming 
companionship of Eve in a beautiful home, the adornment of 
which invited them to employment which brought delight with- 
out weariness; the joyous fellowship of the spirit with its 
Creator, with naught to dim the confidence or poison the love 
of the child as he looked into the face of his Father ; not a cloud 
over his path, not a jar in his nature, not a hot impulse of 
passion in his blood, no dread of evil, no experience of pain, no 
fear of death, — his whole being, like a perfectly tuned instru- 
ment, yielding at every touch of every string a sweet note of 
melody, and his whole life a grand anthem of praise to his 
Maker ; who can even imagine the “fullness of joy” that thrilled 
and crowned the life of sinless man ? — Isaac Errett, Editor of 
Christian Standard; Cincinnati, 0. 

Man, a Feudal Servant, — We are feudal servants, holding our 
title over the lower creation by grant from the Creator and 
Lord of all. But, elated by arrogance, the feudal servant has 
rebelled against his feudal lord. We ought to consider ourselves 
servants, but set up ourselves as independent lords of creation. 
We ought to be priests of God, re-offering to Him, and using 
for His glory, whatever His creation has provided for us ; but 
have become idolaters, worshiping the idols of our own selves. 
It is one of the effects of that rebellion, that our royal scepter 
became broken, and that only a fragment of it remained in our 
hand ; for our present knowledge and power, are but poor 
fragments of the glory which we were originally destined to 
enjoy. — Tholuclc : Commentary on Psalm viii. 

The lion has his tooth, the crocodile his coat of mail, the 
birds their wings, the fish their fins ; but which is man’s weapon 
for attack, which his shield for defense? — the spirit from God; 
therefore, all must obey him. The cattle on the pasture, wild 
beasts roaming through the forests, birds flying below the 
expanse of heaven, fish swimming in the depths of the sea; 
they must all obey him— man is their lord and king. — Tholuclc : 
Ibid. 


MAN. 


299 


When you look upon a large and beautiful house, though you 
should not see the master, and find it quite empty, no one can 
persuade you that it was built for the mice and weasels that 
abound in it. — Cicero . 

Man a Rccd — That Thinks* — Man is but a reed, the frailest in 
nature ; but he is a reed that thinks. It needs not that the 
whole universe should arm itself to crush him — a vapor, a drop 
of water, will suffice to destroy him. But should the uni- 
verse crush him, man would yet be nobler than that which 
destroys him : for he knows that he dies ; while of the advan- 
tage which the universe has over him, the universe knows 
nothing. — Pascal : Thoughts , Part 1st, Art. 4. 

Dangerous to Show Man His Greatness or His Meanness.— It is of 
dangerous consequence to represent to man how near he is to 
the level of beasts, without showing him at the same time his 
greatness. It is likewise dangerous to let him see his great- 
ness without his meanness. It is more dangerous yet to leave 
him ignorant of either; but very beneficial that he should be 
made sensible of both. * * * * Man is made for reflec- 
tion ; hence all his dignity and value. His dignity consists in 
the right direction of his mind, and the exercise of his intel- 
lect in the study of himself, his Author, and his end. But 
what is the mental occupation of the world at large? Never 
this ; but diversion, wealth, fame, power : without regard to 
the essential duties of intellectual man. The human intellect 
is most admirable in its nature ; it must" have strange defects 
to make it despicable ; and, in fact, it has so many and so great, 
as to be supremely contemptible. How great is it in itself, 
how mean in its corruptions! There is in man a continual 
conflict between his reason and his passions. He might enjoy 
tranquillity to a certain extent, were he mastered by either of 
these singly. If he had reason without passion, or passion 
without reason, he might have some degree of peace ; but, 
possessing both, he is in a state of perpetual warfare : for peace 
with one is war with the other ; he is divided against himself. 
If it be an unnatural blindness to live without inquiring into 
our true constitution and condition, it proves a hardness 
yet more dreadful to believe in God and live in sin —Pascal : 
Ibid . 

A Lofty Conception of Man.— The essence of our being, the 
mystery in us that calls itself “ I ” — ah, what words have we for 


300 


MAN. 


such things ? — is a breath of Heaven ; the Highest Being 
reveals himself in man. This body, these faculties, this life of 
ours, is it not all as a vesture for that Unnamed? “There is 
but one temple in the universe,” says the devout Novalis, 
“ and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than that high 
form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this revela- 
tion in the flesh. We touch heaven when we lay our hand on 
a human body.” This sounds much like a mere flourish of 
rhetoric ; but it is not so. If well meditated, it will turn out to 
be a scientific fact ; the expression, in such words as can be 
had, of the actual truth of the thing. We are the miracle of 
miracles — the great inscrutable mystery of God. We cannot 
understand it, we know not how to speak of it ; but we feel 
and know, if we like, that it is verily so. — Carlyle, 

Sin Shows Itself on the Man. — A man passes for that he is 
worth. What he is engraves itself on his face, on his form, on his 
fortunes, in letters of light. Concealment avails him nothing ; 
boasting nothing. There is confession in the glances of our 
eyes ; in our smiles ; in salutations ; and the grasp of hands. 
His sin bedaubs him, mars all his good impression. Men know 
not why they do not trust him ; but they do not trust him. His 
vice glasses his eye, cuts lines of mean expression in his cheek, 
pinches the nose, sets the mark of the beast on the back of the 
head, and writes O fool! fool! on the forehead of a king. 
If you would not be known to do anything, never do it. A 
man may play the fool in the drifts of a desert, but every 
grain of sand shall seem to see. He may be a solitary eater, 
but he cannot keep his foolish counsel. A broken complexion, 
a swinish look, ungenerous acts, and the want of due know- 
ledge — all blab. — Emerson : Spiritual Laws, 

No Prizes For Vain Man. — Brother ! I have looked at men, at 
their insect-anxieties, and giant projects — their god-like schemes 
and mouse-like occupations — their wondrous race-running after 
Happiness he trusting to the gallop of his horse — he to the 
nose of his ass — a third to his own legs : this whirling lottery 
of life, in which so many a creature stakes his innocence, and 
— his Heaven! all trying for a prize, and— blanks are the whole 
drawing — there was not a prize in the batch.— Schiller : The 
Robbers. 

What Life Is. — This life’s a mystery. The value of a thought 
cannot be told ; but it is clearly worth a thousand lives like 


MAN. 


301 


many men’s. And yet men love to live as if mere life were 
worth their living for. What but perdition will it be to most ? 
Life’s more than breath and the quick round of blood. It is a 
great spirit and a busy heart. The coward and the small in 
soul scarce do live. One generous feeling — one great thought 
— one deed of good, ere night, would make life longer seem, 
than if each yeaj? might number a thousand days, spent as this 
is by nations of mankind. We live in deeds, not years; in 
thoughts, not breaths ; in feelings, not in figures on a dial. We 
should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives, who thinks 
most — feels the noblest — acts the best. — Philip James Bailey : 
Festus, p. 80. 

Man But Earthy at the Best. — Something foreign, and more 
foreign, is ever clinging to the noblest conception the mind can 
form. When we have attained to the good of this world, what 
is better is termed falsehood and vanity. The glorious feelings 
which gave us life grow torpid in the worldly throng. If phan- 
tasy, at one time, on daring wing, and full of hope, dilates to 
infinity — a little space is now enough for her, when venture 
after venture has been wrecked in the whirlpool of time. Care 
straightway builds her nest in the depths of the heart, hatches 
vague tortures there, rocks herself restlessly, and frightens 
joy and peace away. She is ever putting on some new mask ;. 
she may appear as house and land, as wife and child, as fire, 
water, dagger, poison. You tremble before all that does not 
befall you, and must be always wailing what you never lose. I 
am not like the heavenly essences; I feel it but too deeply. I 
am like the worm, which drags itself through the dust— which, 
as it seeks its living in the dust, is crushed and buried by the 
step of the passer-by. — Goethe: Faust, p. 47. 

Shakspeare’s Conception. — What is a man, if his chief good, 
and market of his time, be but to sleep and feed? A beast — 
no more. Sure, he, that made us with such large discourse, 
looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god- 
like reason, to fust in us unused. Now, whether it be bestial 
oblivion, or some craven scruple of thinking too precisely on 
the event — a thought, which, quartered, hath but one part wis- 
dom, and ever three parts coward — I do not know why, yet I 
live to say, “This thing’s to do ;” since I have cause, and will,, 
and strength, and means to do it.— Shakspeare: Hamlet . 


302 


MAN. 


What a piece of work is a man ! How noble in reason ! how 
infinite in faculties ! in form and moving, how express and 
admirable! in action, how like an angel ! in apprehension, how 
like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals. 
Shakspeare : Ibid . 

A Precarious Situation. — Man, said he, is free and without 
limits — not in respect to what he will do or enjoy, butin respect 
to what he will do without. He can, if he will , will to dispense 
with everything. In fact, he continued, one has simply the 
choice, either always or never to fear ; for thy life-tent stands 
over a loaded mine, and, round about, the hours aim at thee 
naked weapons. Only one in a thousand hits ; and in any case? 
I am sure I would sooner fall standing than bending like a 
coward. — Jean Paul Richter : Titan , Cycle 67. 

Man’s Function. — Man’s use and function is to be the witness 
of the glory of God, and to advance that glory by his reason- 
able obedience and resultant happiness. Whatever enables us 
to fulfill this function, is in the pure and first sense of the word 
useful to us ; pre-eminently, therefore, whatever sets the glory 
of God more brightly before us. But things that only help us 
to exist, are, in a secondary and mean sense, useful, or rather, if 
they be looked for alone, they are useless and worse ; for it 
would be better that we should not exist, than that we should 
guiltily disappoint the purposes of existence. — John RusTcin : 
True and Beautiful, p. 400. 

The Intoxication of Nature. — Nature gets us out of youth into 
manhood, as sailors are hurried on board of vessels — in a state 
of intoxication. We are hustled into maturity reeling with our 
passions and imaginations, and we have drifted far away from 
port before we awake out of our illusions. But to carry us out of 
maturity into old age, without our knowing where we are going, 
she drugs us with strong opiates, and so we stagger along 
with wide open eyes that see nothing until snow enough has 
fallen on our heads to rouse our comatose brains out of their 
stupid trances. * * * — 0. W. Holmes: Autocrat of the 

Breakfast Table , p . 178. 

Man Like a Clock. — Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The 
Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the case, 
and gives the key into the hands of the Angel of the Resurrec- 
tion. Tic-tac ! tic-tac ! go the wheels of thought ; our will 


MAN. 


303 


cannot stop them ; they cannot stop themselves ; sleep cannot 
still them; madness only makes them go faster ; death alone 
can break into the case, and, seizing the ever-swinging pendu- 
lum, which we call the heart, silence at last the clicking of the 
terrible escapement we have carried so long beneath our 
wrinkled foreheads. — 0. W. Holmes : Ibid , p. 214. 

Ulan a menial.- — I fill a subordinate place in the world ; why 
should not you ? Is there any good reason why you should be 
vicar of Bowden, and the vicar of Bowden should tend a toll- 
bridge, or conduct a railroad train I Since these things are to 
be done by somebody, you and I may as well take the part that 
comes to us and perform it. It is not best to stop the wheels 
of society on our private account. If you and I have had any 
injustice done to us in the assignment of our duties, it will not 
mend anything to fasten our di-fortune upon somebody else : 
and you and I are not the men to skulk, I think. Genuine, 
manly pluck and good nature will settle much of this difficulty. 
If our advance involve nothing more than a change of places 
with others, it is not exactly the manly thing to whine about 
our lot. — Hr, Holland: Gold Foil , p, 164. 

Conscience Corrupted. — A man shall be vicious and utterly 
debauched in his principles, exceptionable in his conduct to 
the world ; shall live shameless, in the open commission of a sin 
which no reason or pretence can justify; a sin by which, contrary 
to all the workings of humanity, he shall ruin forever the 
deluded partner of his guilt ; rob her of her best dowry ; and 
not only cover her own head with dishonor, but involve a 
virtuous family in shame and dishonor for her sake. Surely, 
you will think Conscience must lead such a man a troublesome 
life ; he can have no rest night or day from its reproaches. 

Alas ! Conscience had something else to do all this time than 
break in upon him; as Elijah reproached the god Baal, this 
domestic god was either talking, or pursuing, or was on a journey 
or per adventure he slept , and could not be awoke. 

Perhaps he was gone out in company with Honor, to fight a 
duel, to pay off some debt at play ; or dirty annuity, the bar- 
gain of his lust. Perhaps Conscience all this time was engaged 
at home, talking aloud against petty larceny, and executing 
vengeance upon some such puny crimes, as his fortune and 
rank of life secured him against all temptation of committing ; 


304 


MAN. 


so that he li^es as merrily, sleeps as soundly in his bed, and at 
last meets death as unconcernedly! perhaps much more so 
than a much better man. — Lawrence Sterne ; Tristam Shandy , 

p. 112. 

A Poetic Truth. — Wisdom’s self oft seeks to sweet retired 
solitude, where with her best nurse, Contemplation, she plumes 
her feathers, and lets grow her wings, that in the various 
bustle of resort were all too ruffled and sometimes impaired- 
He that has light within his own clear breast, may sit in the 
center and enjoy bright day; but he that hides a dark soul, 
and foul thoughts, benighted walks under the mid-day sun — 
himself is his own dungeon. — John Milton ; Comus. 

Man Grows Wiser as he Grows Older. — All promise is poor, dila- 
tory man, and that through every stage. When young, indeed,, 
in full content we sometimes nobly rest, unanxious for our- 
selves, and only wish, as duteous sons, our fathers were more 
wise. At thirty man suspects himself a fool ; knows it at forty, 
and reforms his plan ; at fifty chides his infamous delay, pushes 
his prudent purpose to resolve; in all the magnanimity of 
thought, resolves, and re-resolves ; then dies the same. And 
why ? because he thinks himself immortal. All men think all 
men mortal but themselves. — Edward Young : Night Thoughts - 

Man’s Vain Boast. — How is it possible that it should enter 
into the thoughts of vain man to believe himself the principal 
part of God’s Creation ; or that all the rest was ordained for 
him, for his service or pleasure. Man, whose follies we laugh 
at every day, or else complain of them, whose pleasures are 
vanity, and liis passions stronger than his reason ; who sees 
himself everyway weak and impotent; hath no power over 
external nature, little over himself; cannot execute so much as 
his own good resolutions ; mutable, irregular, prone to evil. 
Surely, if we made the least reflection upon ourselves with 
impartiality, we should be ashamed of such an arrogant thought. 
Is it not a more reasonable character or conclusion which the 
prophet hath made, “ Surely, every man is vanity !”_ Thomas 
Burnet : Sacred Theory of the Earth. 

Man is of Dust.— Man is of dust; ethereal hopes are his, 
which, when they should sustain themselves aloft, want due 
consistence ; like a pillar of smoke, that with majestic energy 
from earth rises ; but, having reached the thinner air, melts, and 


MAN. 


305 


dissolves, and is no longer seen. Wlio could be so senseless, 
as long and perseveringly to mourn for any object of his love y 
removed from this unstable world, if he could fix a satisfying' 
view upon that state of pure, imperishable blessedness, which 
reason promises, and holy writ ensures to all believers f — 
Wordsworth : Excursion , Booh 4. 

A Disappointed Familiar.— There is a sort of ill-nature, also, 
that used to be practised towards equals or inferiors, such as 
perhaps a man’s refusing to lend money to such as he knows 
will never repay him, and so to straiten and incommode him- 
self, only to gratify a shark. Or possibly the man may prefer 
his duty and his business before company, and the bettering 
himself before the humoring of others. Or he may not be 
willing to spend his time, his health, and his estate, upon a crew 
of idle, spunging, ungrateful sots, and so to play the prodigal 
among a herd of swine. With several other such unpardona- 
ble faults in behavior (as some will have them), for which the 
fore-mentioned cattle, finding themselves disappointed, will be 
sure to go grumbling and grunting away, and not fail to pro- 
claim him a morose, ill-conditioned, ill-natured person, in all 
clubs and companies whatsoever ; and so that man’s work is 
done, and his name lies grovelling upon the ground-in all the 
taverns, brandy-shops and coffee-houses about town -— Robert 
South : Sermons. 

The Throes of Hypocrisy. — Hypocrisy had weighed upon this 
man for thirty years. He had been evil itself, yoked with 
probity for a mate. He detested virtue with the feeling of one 
who has been trapped into a hateful match. He had always had 
a wicked premeditation; from the time when he attained man- 
hood, he had worn the cold and rigid armor of appearances. 
Underneath this was the demon of self. He had lived like a 
bandit in the disguise of an honest citizen. He had been con- 
fined in garments of innocence as in oppressive mummy cloths - 
had worn those angel- wings which the devils find so wearisome 
in their fallen state. To live a life which is a perpetual false- 
hood, is to suffer unknown tortures. To be premeditating in- 
definitely a diabolical act; to have to assume austerity; to 
brood over secret infamy, seasoned with outward good fame ; to 
have continually to put the world off the scent; to present a 
perpetual illusion, and never to be one’s self— is a burdensome 
T 


306 


MAN. 


task ; * * * to transform deformity into beauty ; to fashion 

wickedness into the shape of perfection ; to tickle, as it were, 
with the point of a dagger ; to put sugar with poison ; to keep 
a bridle on every gesture and a watch over every tone, not even 
to have a countenance of one’s own — what can be harder, what 
can be more torturing 1 ? — Victor Hugo : The Toilers of the Sea. 

Its Eternal Blushes. — Seestthou the man ! A serpent with an 
angel’s voice ! a grave with flowers bestrewed ! and yet few 
were deceived, his virtues being over-done, his face too grave, 
his prayers too long, his charities too pompously attended, and 
his speech larded too frequently, and out of time with serious 
phraseology — were rents that in his garments oped in spite of 
him, through which the well-accustomed eye could see the 
rottenness of his heart. None deeper blushed, as in the all- 
piercing light he stood exposed, no longer herding with the 
holy ones ; yet still he tried to bring his countenance to sancti- 
monious seeming ; but, meanwhile, the shame within, now 
visible to all, his purpose balked; the righteous smiled, and 
even despair itself some signs of laughter gave, as ineffectu- 
ally he strove to wipe his brow, that inward guiltiness defiled. — 
Robert Polloh : Course of Time. 

An Awful Chaos. — This should have been a noble creature ; he 
hath all the energy which would have made a goodly frame of 
glorious elements, had they been wisely mingled ; as it is, it is 
an awful chaos — light and darkness — and mind and dust — and 
passions and pure thoughts, mixed, and contending without 
end or order, all dormant or destructive ; he will perish, and 
yet he must not; I will try once more, for such are worth re- 
demption. — Byron : Manfred , Act III. 

More Good in Man Than Once Seen. — I now see more good and 
evil in all men than heretofore I did. I see that good men are 
not so good as I once thought they were, but have more imper- 
fections ; and that nearer approach and fuller trial doth make 
the best appear more weak and faulty than their admirers at a 
distance think. And I find that few are so bad as either mali- 
cious enemies or censorious separating professors do imagine. 
In some, indeed, I find that human nature is corrupted into a 
greater likeness to devils than I once thought any on earth 
had been. But even in the wicked, usually there is more for 
grace to make advantage of, and more to testify for God and 


MAN. 


307 


holiness, than I once believed there had been. — Richard Baxter: 
Rife and Times. 

Royalty Nothing. — What matter is it of whom any one is 
descended, that is not of ill-fame ; since ’tis his own virtue that 
must raise, or vice depress him J An ancestor’s character is no 
excuse to a man’s ill-actions, but an aggravation of his de- 
generacy ; and since virtue comes not by generation, I neither 
am the better nor the worse for my forefather; to be sure, not 
in God’s account; nor should it be in man’s. Nobody would 
endure injuries the easier, or reject favors the more, for coming 
by the hand of a man well or ill-descended. To be descended of 
wealth and titles, fills no man’s head with brains, or heart with 
truth; those qualities come from a higher cause. — William 
Penn. 

True Love of Humanity. — The true love of humanity must 
attach us to everything which belongs to man. If you love 
human nature, you must take it as it is, and regard it under 
all its aspects. It is all entire within each one of you. 
Re-enter into your own consciousness ; lay hold upon every 
part of the whole man, omit not any ; take, equally, the idea of 
the useful, of the just, of the beautiful, of the holy, of the 
true ; it is thus that you will exert yourself to comprehend all 
the parts of humanity: for if there be one single element 
which lies upon you as a burden, and against which you feel a 
repugnance, you will transport these prejudices into history. — 
Victor Cousin : History of Philosophy. 

Man Undergoing a Perpetual Change. — The mortal nature is 
seeking as far as possible to be everlasting and immortal ; and 
this is only to be attained by generation, because the new is 
always left in the place of the old. For even in the same 
individual there is succession and not absolute unity ; a man is 
called the same ; but yet, in the short interval which elapses 
between youth and age, and in which every animal is said to 
have life and identity, he is undergoing a perpetual process of 
loss and reparation— hair, flesh, bones, blood, and the whole 
body, are always changing. And this is true, not only of the 
body, but also of the soul, whose habits, tempers, opinions, 
desires, pleasures, pains, fears, never remain the same in any 
one of us, but are always coming and going. And what is yet 
more surprising is that this is also true of knowledge ; and not 


308 


MAN. 


only does knowledge in general come and go, so that in this 
respect we are never the same; but particular knowledge also 
experiences a like change. — Jowett’s Plato : The Symposium, p. 
499. 

Man Related to Present, Past and Future.— It is a noble faculty 
of our nature which enables us to connect our thoughts, our 
sympathies, and our happiness, with what is distant in placo 
or time ; and, looking before and after, to hold communion at 
once with our ancestors and our posterity. Human and mortal 
although we are, we are nevertheless not mere insulated beings, 
without relation to the past or the future. Neither the point of 
time, nor the spot of earth, in which we physically live, bounds 
our rational and intellectual enj oyments. We live in the past by 
a knowledge of its history ; and in the future by hope and antici- 
pation. By ascending to an association with our ancestors ; by 
contemplating their example and studying their character ; by 
partaking their sentiments, and imbibing their spirit; by 
accompanying them in their toils, by sympathizing in their 
sufferings and rejoicing in their successes and their triumphs,, 
we mingle our own existence with theirs, and seem to belong 
to their age. We become their contemporaries, live the lives 
which they lived, endure what they endured, and partake in 
the rewards which they enjoyed. And in like manner, by 
running along the line of future time, by contemplating the 
probable fortunes of those who are coming after us, by 
attempting something which may promote their happiness, and 
leaving some not dishonorable memorial of ourselves for their 
regard, when we shall sleep with the fathers ; we protract our 
own earthly being, and seem to crowd whatever is future, as well 
as all that is past, into the narrow compass of our earthly 
existence. 

As it is not a vain and false, but an exalted and religious- 
imagination, which leads us to raise our thoughts from the orb r 
which, amid this universe of worlds, the Creator has given us 
to inhabit, and to send them with something of the feeling 
which nature prompts, and teaches to be proper among children 
of the same Eternal Parent, to the contemplation of the 
myriads of fellow-beings, with which His goodness has peopled 
the infinite space — so neither is it false or vain to consider 
ourselves as interested and connected with our whole race, 
through all time ; allied to our ancestors ; allied to our posterity ;, 


MAN. 


309 


'Closely compacted on all sides with others ; ourselves being 
but links in the great chain of being, which begins with the 
origin of our race, runs onward through its successive genera- 
tions, binding together the past, the present, and the future, 
and terminating at last with the consummation of all things 
earthly at the throne of God —Daniel Webster: Plymouth 
Address. 

Men, Fearful to Express the Truth in Them.— They were men 
probably who had no thought beyond their own day, who lived 
in amity with surrounding idolatry, though differing from it, 
made no great protest, and stood upon an ordinary neighborly 
footing with the world. Such quiet, good men are respected, 
but they do not root the truth in the world; what they believe 
is apt to die away with them, and, indeed, they expect it to do 
so ; they have no great confidence in the power of truth ; they 
assume that error is the normal condition of mankind, and 
think it vain to struggle with it; they leave men alone, and are 
satisfied with saving their own souls. Such men have their 
place and use, and do their own work in their day, but they 
are not made to be instruments in the hands of God for 
instituting a new dispensation, and founding a Church — J. B . 
Mozley : Ruling Ideas in Early Ages , p. 21. 

A Man May Not Live at Random. — A man may do anything, 
said the wise old octogenarian of Weimar (Goethe), except live 
at random. Floating about on rosy clouds for mere self-delec- 
tation, or flashing forth a series of iridescent coruscations for 
the amusement of those who seek for excitement, rather than 
improvement, will never exhaust the function of “the pious 
l)ards who speak things worthy of Phoebus.” To attain this 
dignity, there must be a consecration of the whole man, his 
natural genius, and his acquired dexterities, to the service of 
the great Architect, in whose living temple the highest honor 
the best of us can achieve is to be serviceable stones . — John 
Stuart Blackie : Natural History of Atheism , p. 70. 

A Purely Ideal Man. — He dwells so exclusively in the world 
of ideas that the world of facts seems trifling; nothing is worth 
the while; and he has been so long objectless and purposeless, 
so far as actual life is concerned, that, when at last an object 
and an aim are forced upon him, he cannot deal with them, and 
gropes about vainly for a motive outside of himself that shall 


310 


MAN. 


marshalhis thoughts for him and guide his faculties into the 
path of action. He is the victim not so much of feebleness of 
will as of an intellectual indifference that hinders the will from 
working long in any one direction. He wishes to will, but 
never wills. His continual iteration of resolve shows that he 
has no resolution. He is capable of passionate energy where 
the occasion presents itself suddenly from without, because 
nothing is so irritable as conscious irresolution with a duty to 
perform. But of deliberate energy he is not capable ; for there 
the impulse must come from within, and the blade of his 
analysis is so subtile that it can divide the finest hair of motive 
’twixt north and northwest side, leaving him desperate to choose 
between them . — James Russel Lowell : Essays. 

The Matter-of-Fact Man. — Now, what I want is Facts. Teach 
these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted 
in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You 
can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts ; 
nothing else will ever be of service to them. This is the prin- 
ciple on which I bring up my own children, and this is the 
principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir ! 
********* 

Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts 
and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle 
that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to 
be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind,. 
sir — peremptorily Thomas — Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule 
and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his 
pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human 
nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere 
question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. —Charles 
LicJcens : Hard Times . 

Human Ogres. — W e all know ogres. Their caverns are round us 
and about us. There are the castles of several ogres within a mile 
of the spot where I write. I think some of them suspect I am 
an ogre myself. I am not; but I know they are. I visit them. 

I don’t mean to say that they take a cold roast prince out of 
the cupboard and have a cannibal feast before me. But I see 
the bones lying about the roads to their houses, and in the 
areas and gardens. * * * * in the company assembled in 
your genteel drawing-room, who bow here and there, and 


MAN. 


311 


smirk in white neck-cloths, you receive men who elbow through 
life successfully enough, but who are ogres in private ; men, 
wicked, false, rapacious, flattering; cruel hectors at home, smil- 
ing courtiers abroad ; causing wives, children, servants, parents, 
to tremble before them, and smiling and bowing as they bid 
strangers welcome into their castles. I say there are men who 
have crunched the bones of victim after victim; in whose 
closets lie skeletons picked frightfully clean. — W. M, ThacJc 
eray : Roundabout Papers, 

A Thankful Glutton. — The plainest diet seems the fittest to be 
preceded by the grace. That which is least stimulative to 
appetite leaves the mind most free for foreign considerations. 
A man may feel thankful, heartily thankful, over a dish of 
plain mutton with turnips, and have leisure to reflect upon the 
ordinance and institution of eating ; when he shall confess a 
perturbation of mind, inconsistent with the purposes of the 
grace, at the presence of venison or turtle. When I have sat 
(a rare hospitality) at rich men’s tables, with the savory soup 
and messes steaming up the nostrils, and moistening the lips 
of guests with desire and a distracted choice, I have felt the 
introduction of that ceremony to be unseasonable. With the 
ravenous orgasm upon you, it seems impertinent to interpose 
a religious sentiment. It is a confusion of purpose to mutter 
out praises from a mouth that waters. The heats of epicur- 
ism put out the gentle flame of devotion. The incense 
which rises round is pagan, and the belly-god intercepts it for 
his own. The very excess of the provision beyond the needs, 
takes away all sense of proportion between the end and means. 
The giver is veiled by his gifts . — Charles Lamb : Essays, 

Decayed Passions Not a Virtue. — God must touch our hearts, 
and our consciences must amend of themselves, by the force 
of our reason, and not by the decay of our appetites. Pleasure 
is in itself neither pale or discolored, to be discerned by him 
and decayed eyes. We ought to love temperance for itself, 
and because God has commanded that and chastity ; but what 
we are reduced to by catarrhs, and that I am obliged to the 
stone for, is neither chastity nor temperance. A man cannot 
boast that he despises pleasure if he cannot see it. Age 
imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does in the face, 
and souls are never, or very rarely seen, that in growing old 


312 


MAN. 


do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all together, both 
toward his perfection and decay . — Montaigne : Essays. 

A Man of Decision. — It is wonderful how even the apparent 
casualties of life seem to bow to a spirit that will not bow to 
them, and yield to assist a design, after having in vain 
attempted to frustrate it. You may have seen such examples, 
though they are comparatively not numerous. You may have 
seen a man of this strong character in a state of indecision 
concerning some affair, in which it was requisite for him to 
determine, because it was requisite for him to act. But, in this 
case, his manner would assure that he would not remain long 
undecided ; you would wonder if you found him still at a loss 
the next day. * * * * When the decision was formed, and 
the purpose fixed, you would feel an entire assurance that 
something would absolutely be done. It is characteristic of 
such a mind to think for effect ; and the pleasure of escaping 
from temporary doubt gives an additional impulse to the force 
with which it is carried into action. * * * * One signal 
advantage possessed by a mind of this character is that its 
passions are not wasted. The whole measure of passion of 
which any mind, with important transactions before it is ca 
pable, is not more than enough to supply interest and energy to 
its practical exertions ; and, therefore, as little as possible of 
this sacred fire should be extended in a way that does not 
augment the force of action. It exempts also from a great 
deal of interference and persecution to which an irresolute 
man is subjected. When a firm, decisive mind is recognized^ 
it is curious to see how the space clears around a man, and 
leaves him room and freedom. This disposition to interrogate 
dictate, or banter, preserves a respectful and polite distance, 
judging it not unwise to keep the peace with a person of so 
much energy . — John Foster : Decision of Character. 

Self-Examination. — It is dangerous for a man too suddenly, or 
too easily, to believe himself. Wherefore let us examine, 
watch, observe and inspect our own hearts ; for we ourselves 
are our own greatest flatterers. We should every night call 
ourselves to account. “What infirmity have I mastered to-day ? 
what passion opposed? what temptation resisted ? what virtue 
acquired Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought 
every day to the shrift. Oh, the blessed sleep that follows such 


MAN. 


313 


a diary ! Oh, the tranquillity, liberty, and greatness of that mind 
that is a spy upon itself, and a private censor of its own manners. 
It is my custom every night, so soon as the candle is out, to 
run over all the words and actions of the past day; and I let 
nothing escape me; for why should I fear the sight of my own 
errors, when I can admonish and forgive myself? “I was a little 
too hot in such a dispute ; my opinion might have been as well 
spared, for it gave offence, and did no good at all. The thing 
was true, but all truths are not to be spoken at all times ; I would 
I had held my tongue, for there is no contending with fools or 
our superiors. I have done ill, but it shall be so no more.” If 
overy man would but thus look into himself, it would be the 
better for us all. What can be more reasonable than this daily 
review of a life that we cannot warrant for a moment? — Seneca : 
Of a Happy Life, p. 109. 

The Listless Man. — The man who has felt with all his soul the 
significance of time will not be long in learning any lesson that 
this world has to teach him. Have you ever felt it? Have 
you ever realized how your own little streamlet is glidingaway, 
and bearing you along with it towards that awful other world, 
of which all things here are but the thin shadows, down into 
that eternity towards which the confused wreck of all earthly 
things is bound ? Let us realize that ; until that sensation of 
time, and the infinite meaning which is wrapped up in it, has 
taken possession of our souls, there is no chance of our ever 
feeling strongly that it is worse than madness to sleep that 
time away. Every day in this world has its work ; and every 
day, as it rises out of eternity, keeps putting to each of us the 
question afresh, What will you do before to-day has sunk into 
eternity and nothingness again ? And now what have we to 
say with respect to this strange, solemn thing — time ? That 
men do with it through life just what the apostles did for one 
precious and irreparable hour of it in the garden of Geth- 
semane— they go to sleep. Have you ever seen those marble 
statues in some public square or garden, which art has so 
finished into a perennial fountain that through the lips, or 
through the hands, the clear water flows in a perpetual stream, 
on, on and on forever ; and the marble stands there — passive, 
cold— making no effort to arrest the gliding water. It is so 
that time flows through the hands of men— swift, never pausing 
till it has run itself out ; and there is the man petrified into a 


314 


MAN. 


marble sleep, not feeling what it is which is passing away 
forever. — F. W. Robertson : Vol . 2 , p. 334. 

Disturbed by Trifles.— A man may stand, brave and calm and 
self-possessed, the battle’s shock, that breaks into the awful 
house of life, and yet may be disturbed and shaken in spirit, 
and utterly thrown from his self-possession by the breaking of 
a China jar. He may drive his car of victory through fields 
which epic song shall celebrate, and yet be completely upset by 
the snapping of a harp string. Oh! fine and delicate and 
manifold and much entangled are the tissues of life which 
surround us ; and he who brings music out of the discord, and 
harmony out of the confusion; he who walks through life 
with an even temper and a gentle patience, patient with 
himself, patient with others, patient with difficulties and crosses, 
thoughtful, not of showy appearances, but of inmost realities, 
thoughtful of virtue and of God ; he has an every-day greatness, 
beyond that which is won in battle, or chanted in cathedrals, or 
heralded with the shout and pageantry of a triumphal proces- 
sion. — JDr. Orville Dewey : Vol. 4=j p. 140. 

The Multitude is Rising. — The multitude is rising from the 
dust. Once we heard of the few, now we hear of the many; 
once of the prerogatives of a part, now of the rights of all. 
We are looking as never before through the disguises, envel- 
opments of ranks and classes, to the common nature which 
lies below them, and are beginning to learn that every being 
who partakes of it has noble powers to cultivate, solemn duties 
to perform, inalienable . rights to assert, a vast destiny to 
accomplish. The grand idea of humanity, of the importance 
of man as man, is spreading silently, but surely. Not that the 
worth of the human being is at all understood as it should be ; 
but the truth is glimmering through the darkness. A faint 
consciousness of it has seized upon the public mind. Even 
the most abject portions of society are visited by some dreams 
of a better condition for which they were designed. — Channing : 
The Present Age. 

What Man Was Framed For. — Man was framed to co-operate in 
his aspirations and endeavors with the Sovereign Wisdom 
and Love. This is his distinguishing function, and conscience 
is the indwelling law which guides him in executing it. In the 
consciousness of tending towards this end and of conforming 


MAN. 


315 


to this law, there is a sense of fulfilled obligation and of quiet 
respect, a peace within, which no accumulation of outward 
advantages, no gratification of selfish desires and worldly 
ambition, can possibly replace, and which, though it may not 
take the name of happiness, no man actually possessing it 
would deliberately exchange for what is called happiness. 
Painful effort, constant watchfulness, sharp thwartings of strong 
inclination, may be among the conditions of keeping hold upon 
it ; yet, in spite of all, the earnest and awakened soul clings to 
it as its chief good . — John James Tayler : Christian Aspects of 
Faith and. Duty, p. 113. 

The Dynasty of the Future. — The dynasty of the future is to 
have glorified man for its inhabitant ; but it is to be the dynasty 
— “the kingdom”— not of glorified man made in the image of 
God, but of God himself in the form of man. In the doctrine 
of the two conjoined natures, human and Divine, and in the 
further doctrine that the terminal dynasty is to be peculiarly 
the dynasty of Him in whom the natures are united, we find 
that required progression beyond which progress cannot go. 
We find the point of elevation never to be exceeded meetly 
coincident with the final period never to be terminated— the 
infinite in height harmoniously associated with the eternal in 
duration. Creation and the Creator meet at one point, and in 
one person. The long ascending line from dead matter to man 
has been a progress Godwards .— Hugh Miller: Testimony of 
Boohs, p. 178. 


THE BIBLE. 


# RGANIC Theory of Inspiration Criticized.— The purely organic 
theory of Inspiration rests on no Scriptural authority, and 
if we except a few ambiguous metaphors, is supported by no 
historical testimony. It is at variance with the whole form and 
fashion of the Bible, and is destructive of all that is holiest in 
man, and highest in religion, which seeks the co-ordinate 
elevation of all our faculties, and not the destruction of any 
one of them. If we look exclusively at the objective side of 
Inspiration the prophet becomes a mere soulless machine, 
mechanically answering the force which moves it, the pen and 
not the penman of the Holy Spirit. He ceases to be a man 
while he is affected by the frenzy of the*heathen seers, and in 
a momentary influence gives up his whole spiritual growth. 
But on the other hand, if we regard Inspiration only subject- 
ively, we lose all sense of a fresh and living connection of the 
prophet with God. He remains indeed a man, but he is nothing 
more. He appears only to develop naturally a germ of truth 
which lies within him, and to draw no new supplies of grace 
and wisdom from without. There is no re-union of the divine 
and human in his soul on which a Church may rest its faith. 
He may deduce, interpret, combine truth, but in the absence of 
a creative power he is deficient in that which an instinct of our 
being declares to be the essential attribute of the highest 
teacher. Such a theory removes all that is divine in our faith, 
and destroys the title deeds of the Church’s inheritance. It is 
opposed to the universal tenor of Scripture and tradition, and 
leaves our wants unsatisfied and our doubts unanswered by God. 
If it be true, man is after all alone in the world, abandoned to 
the blind issues of fate or reason or circumstance. His teachers 
are merely his fellow-men, and their words claim his hearing 
only so far as they find a response in a heart already influenced 
by personal and social life. And who, then, shall answer him 
that their promises are more than echoes of his own ctavings ; 
and that the ready acceptance which their doctrine has found is 


THE BIBLE. 


317 


anything but a natural expression of the wants and wishes of 
men? — B. F. Westcott: Introduction to the Gospels , p. 32. 

Idea of Inspiration Offers No Difficulties.— Intellectually, the 
idea of Inspiration offers no extraordinary difficulties. To 
enlarge or inform any faculty is evidently a secondary opera- 
tion of the same power by which it was first given and 
quickened. The intercourse between the creator and the 
creature must, in common with all spiritual manifestations, 
remain a mystery ; but that it does take place in some form or 
other is a matter of constant experience. And if we may ven- 
ture to regard Inspiration merely as a mental phenomenon, it 
is not more remarkable that man’s spirit should be brought 
into direct connection with the Spirit of God, than that one 
mind should be able to exercise a sympathetic influence upon 
another. * * * Like every gift of God, 

Inspiration is bestowed for some special end to which it is 
exactly proportioned. At one time we may picture to our- 
selves the Lawgiver recording the letter of the Divine Law 
which he had received directly from God “inscribed upon 
tables of stone,” or spoken “face to face.” 

How Inspiration Operates.— At another we may watch the 
sacred Historian, unconsciously it may be and yet freely, seiz- 
ing on those facts in the history of the past which were the 
turning-points of a nation’s spiritual progress, gathering the 
details which combine to give the truest picture of each crisis, 
and grouping all according to the laws of a marvelous symme- 
try, which in after -times might symbolize their hidden meaning. 
Or we may see the Prophet gazing intently on the great strug- 
gle going on around him, discerning the spirits of men, and the 
springs of national life, till the relations of time no longer exist 
in his vision, till all strife is referred to the final conflict of 
good and evil, foreshadowed in the great judgments of the 
world, and all hope is centred in the coming of the Savior, and 
in the certainty of His future triumph. # Another, perhaps, 
looks within his own heart, and as a new light is poured over 
its inmost depths, his devotion finds expression in songs of 
personal penitence and thanksgiving ; in confessions of sins and 
declarations of righteousness, which go far to reconcile the 
mysterious contradictions of our nature. To another is given 
the task of building up the Church. By divine instinct he sees. 


318 


THE BIBLE. 


in scattered congregations types of the great forms of society 
in coming ages, and addresses to them not systems of doc- 
trines, but doctrine embodied in deed, which applies to all 
time, because it expresses eternal truths, and yet specially to 
each time, because it is connected with the realities of daily 
life. 

Forms of Inspiration Similar. — But however various the forms 
of inspired teaching may be, in one respect they are all similar. 
In every case the same twofold character is preserved which 
arises from the combination of the divine influence with the 
human utterance. The language of the Law-giver, the Histo- 
rian, the Prophet, the Psalmist, the Apostle, is characteristic of 
the positions which they severally occupied. Even when they 
speak most emphatically u the words of the Lord,’ 7 they speak 
still as men living among men ; and the eternal truths which 
they declare receive the coloring of the minds through which 
they pass. Nor can it be said that it is easy to eliminate the 
variable quantity in each case ; for the distinguishing peculiari- 
ties of the several writers are not confined to marked features, 
but extend also to a multitude of subtle differences which are 
only felt after careful study. Everywhere there are traces of 
a personality, not destroyed, but even quickened by the action 
of the divine power — of an individual consciousness, not 
suspended, but employed at every stage of the heavenly 
commission. Inspiration, then, according to its manifestation 
in Scripture, is Dynamical and not Mechanical. — B. F. Westcott : 
Ibid , p. 37. 

What We Can Establish. — If we believe that God has in different 
ages authorized certain persons to communicate objective 
truth to mankind, if in the Old Testament history and the 
books of the prophets we find manifest indications of the 
Creator, it is then a secondary consideration, and a question 
on which we way safely agree to differ, whether or not every 
book of the Old Testament was written completely under the 
dictation of God’s Holy spirit, that every word, not only 
doctrinal, but also historical or scientific, must be infallibly 
correct and true. The whole collection of the books has 
been preserved providentially to the Church as the record 
of God’s early dealings with mankind, and especially with one 
chosen race, as the collection of the prophecies and of the 


THE BIBLE. 


319 


religious instruction which God was pleased to communicate to 
man in the preparatory dispensations of His grace ; and with 
these there is a book of sacred psalmody embodying the 
religious experience of men living under the Theocracy, 
some, at least, of the hymns contained in it evincing the power 
of prophecy in their writers. Whatever conclusion, then, may 
be arrived at as to the infallibility of the writers on matters of 
science or history, still the whole collection of the books will 
be really the oracles of God, the Scriptures of God, the record 
and depository of God’s supernatural revelations in early 
times to man. And we may remember that our blessed Lord 
quotes the Psalms as the Scripture, adding, “ And the Scriptures 
cannot be broken.” 

It has been already observed that what holds good of the 
Old Testament holds a fortiori of the New. If the writers of 
it were the accredited messengers from God to man, taught by 
Christ, assured by Him of the teaching of His Holy spirit, sent 
to bring to man the knowledge of God and of His highest 
truths, we cannot doubt that that spirit, who was to guide 
them into all truth, would never let them err in things 
pertaining to God. This is really what we want. We want to 
be assured that we have an infallible depository of religious 
truth. And if we are satisfied that the Apostles were accred- 
ited messengers for delivering God’s message and communi- 
cating God’s truth to the world, clearly we have this assurance. 
############* 

Admission of a Human Element. — If we can establish this 
much, then there seems no need to fear the admission of a 
human element, as well as a Divine, in Scripture. The Apostles 
had the treasure of the Gospel in earthen vessels. The Holy 
Spirit taught the Churches through the instrumentality of men 
of like passions with ourselves. The difficulty of enunciating 
a definite theory of inspiration consists exactly in this — in 
assigning the due weight respectively to the Divine and the 
human elements. A human element there clearly was. Though 
in instances like those of Balaam and Caiaphas we seem to 
have something more like organic inspiration, yet in ordinary 
cases God was pleased to take the nobler instruments of 
man’s thoughts and hearts through which to communicate a 
knowledge of Himself to the world, rather than to act through 
the organs of speech, moving men’s mouths as mere machines. 


320 


THE BIBLE. 


With all the pains and ingenuity which have been bestowed 
upon the subject, no charge of error, even in matters of human 
knowledge, has ever yet been substantiated against any of the 
writers of Scripture. But even if it had been otherwise, is it 
not conceivable that there might have been infallible Divine 
teaching in all things spiritual and heavenly, whilst on mere 
matters of history, or of daily life, Prophets and Evangelists 
might have been suffered to write as men? Even if this were 
true, we need not be perplexed or disquieted, so we can be agreed 
that the Divine element was ever such as to secure the infal- 
lible truth of Scripture in all things T>ivme.~Fdward Harold 
Browne : Aids to Faith, pp. 366-8. 

Practical Religion Cares Little for How Truth Came. — If, therefore, 
we find, on close inquiry, that the historical statements are 
somewhat obscured by subjective influences, our estimate of 
their veracity need be in no wise afflicted thereby. Such a 
result would not conflict in the least with the only tenable idea 
of Inspiration. The organs which the Holy Spirit illuminated 
and inspired to convey his truth to men retained their individu- 
al peculiarities, and remained within the sphere of the psycho- 
logical laws of our being. Besides, Inspiration, both in its 
nature and its object, refers only to man’s religious interests 
and to points connected with it. But practical religion requires 
only a knowledge of the truth itself ; it needs not to understand 
the gradual genetic development of the truth in the intellect, 
or to distinguish the various stages of its advance to distinct 
and perfect consciousness. On the other hand, these latter 
are precisely the aims towards which scientific history directs 
itself. It follows, therefore, that the interest of practical 
religion and that of scientific history may not always run in the 
same channel; and the latter must give place to the former 
especially in points so vital as the direct impression which 
Christ made upon mankind. Frequent illustrations of this dis- 
tinction are afforded by the interpretations of passages from 
the Old Testament given by the apostles. In all our inquiries 
into the evangelical histories we must keep in view the fact that 
they were written not to satisfy scientific, but religious wants ; 
not to afford materials for systematic history, but to set forth 
the ground of human salvation in Christ and his kingdom. — 
Neander: Life of Christ, p. 47. 


THE BIBLE. 


321 


IIow Inspiration Grows on One. — The inspiration of the Bible 
grows upon a man much as a consciousness of his own intellec- 
tual and spiritual life grows upon him. This higher consciousness 
is often sudden in its development. It would seem that in a 
moment — preceded, it may be, by a long, though more or less 
unconscious preparation — an initial life-time is thrown off and a 
new spiritual citizenship is established. In this w T ay the slave 
of dictionaries sometimes rises into a master of languages, the 
slow cipherer into a philosophical arithmetician, and the 
cautious student of politics into a sagacious statesman. The 
line of separation is invisible, almost imaginary, yet it divides 
experiences that are most diverse. In some such way the 
Bible has suddenly elevated itself from a school-book to a 
revelation, and men have felt that they could not set it again 
in the rank of common writings without a sense of serious 
moral loss. They have not foreseen the result of their reading. 
At first they yielded to a merely literary fascination ; by-and-by 
moral sympathy was touched in some degree ; curiosity was 
excited ; then came wonder, and after wonder came uncertainty, 
like a keen pain in the heart ; then came a sentence like this to 
test the faith and to ripen the strange experience into 
Christian joy, — “holy men of old spake as they were moved by 
the Holy Ghost;” and with that sentence came a responsibility 
which put the reader into a new and solemn relation to the 
Book. 

Divine Personality the Great Revelation — If the Bible is divinely 
inspired, it follows that it is divinely authoritative. Inspiration 
and authority must stand or fall together. Consider what it is 
that is professedly revealed. What is it ? It is not history ; 
it is not cosmogony ; it is not ethnology ; it is not even a code of 
morals. It is worth while, then, to pause a moment, that we 
may get the full emphasis of the answer. The supreme revela- 
tion that is made in the Bible is the revelation of God. Every- 
thing else belongs to the region of detail. The divine person- 
ality is the vital all-embracing revelation. Creation may sug- 
gestit; the curious interweaving and combination of daily 
events may point towards it as towards a possibility ; but the 
Bible distinctly reveals it as the secret of all things. But the 
Bible, having made this revelation, cannot stop there. The 
term God includes all other terms. It is not a high symbol in 
abstract reasoning, or the almost serial which the metaphysi- 
u 


322 


THE BIBLE. 


cian is content to begin with ; it is the all-controlling factor in 
regions visible and invisible — it is this, or it is nothing. The 
moment, therefore, that the question of divine Fatherhood or 
Rulership is raised, all the great questions covered by the 
term “ humanity 97 are raised along with it, and by their very 
urgency they may easily create a clamor unfavorable to the 
consideration of their most important bearings. It is better, 
therefore, to reason downward from the quiet and solemn 
heights of the divine personality, than to struggle upwards 
through all the controversy and bewilderment of human inter- 
ests. If the Bible declares the true idea of God, it must pre- 
sumptively give the true doctrine of human nature. God must 
be self-declared. Man has no instruments that can measure 
the divine power, or search out the divine wisdom. But how is 
God to grant a revelation of Himself? Christian theology 
answers — By the inspiration of chosen men who shall be His 
i nstruments for this special purpose. Instantly that inspiration 
becomes thus individualized a great difficulty arises— the very 
difficulty which has been pointed out in the divine incarnation ; 
we look at the divine mystery through the human medium, 
and instead of fixing the mind upon the inspiring Spirit we 
fix it upon the inspired man. It is thus that loss is incurred, 
and that disadvantage is inflicted upon the subjects of inspira- 
tion. To speak, for example, of the inspiration of David , is to 
limit a divine quantity by a human personality; and the danger 
(almost inevitable) is that the mind be fixed upon the term 
David rather than upon the term inspiration. 

We must Enlarge the Minor Term of Inspiration.— We must 
enlarge the minor term, if we can ; and how is this to be done 
but by speaking, not of the inspiration of Moses or David, 
Ezekiel or John, but of the inspiration of humanity , the indi- 
viduals themselves being nothing but the points of contact at 
which a divine action is set up. Much is gained by this elimin- 
ation of the personal element. Inspiration is greater than per- 
sonality. Instead of speaking of the authority of Paul , we 
are to speak of the authority of truth ; Paul may, indeed, have 
been chosen as the medium of utterance, but the utterer is 
God. It is mere peevishness, or perhaps defiance, which 
chafes at the authority of a man ; that is not the question at 
all ; assent is sought to the proposition that the eternal author- 
ity of God has been declared through human instrumentality. 


THE BIBLE. 


323 


In what other way could it have been declared ? Is there any 
other way so free from the vulgarity of sensationalism, so 
rational, so philosophical, so ennobling, so sublime? No hom- 
age is offered to Moses, to David or to Paul. The Bible, in all 
its divine elements, would be unimpaired were the names of its 
human penmen removed. Yet those names are of peculiar 
value in humanizing a volume which requires softening shad- 
ows to mitigate its unique glories. The writers never obtrude 
their personal dignity; they never conceal their personal 
weaknesses ; the word of the Lord is a burden to them, and is 
often accepted with hesitation and misgiving. ***** 
— Dr. Parker : Paraclete , pjp. 22-6. 

Why Wc Should Believe the Apostles. — He who has been where I 
have not been, and seen what I have not seen, is an authority to 
me. If I believe him honest, and no impostor, then I learn 
from him, and depend on his testimony. Now, the writers of 
the New Testament have been where we have not been. They 
have ascended heights, and sounded depths in the spiritual 
world unknown to us. * * * * They come recommended 
by external testimony, and on the strength of that testimony 
we confide in them and try them. If we find that they are not 
able to teach us, they cease to be authorities to us. But if we 
find that they are full of truth, they become our guides and 
teachers, and their authority is more and more confirmed ; that 
they are good and true guides is evidenced by their being able to 
guide us. They lead us into deeper depths of truth and love. 
They become the teachers of the race. The centuries which 
pass add more and more weight to their authority. They 
inspire us ; therefore, they are themselves inspired. It is no 
more necessary, after this, to prove their inspiration, in the 
sense which I have given, than to prove that the sun shines. — 
James Freeman Clarice : Orthodoxy , Its Truths and Errors, pp. 
115-118. 

What the Bible Is.— Viewing the Holy Scripture as to its 
effects, its unity proves it to be the Word of God. It exerts a 
power within and beyond itself ; it sheds light upon itself; it 
radiates its light from its mighty living centre— the world- 
redeeming Christ — to every part, and reflects it from each part 
to every other, and back upon the central truth itself. Thus, 
by virtue of the analogy of faith and the analogy of Scripture, 


324 


THE BIBLE. 


the Bible is the one indivisible word of God; in its total 
impression and operation, more fully the word of God, than in 
its particular words or utterances. 

Hence, its eternal efficiency is pure and perfect. As a body 
of records, it points back from itself to its origin, the living 
revelation. As a word of life, it points beyond itself, to tho 
living Christ. It is no idol which fetters the hearts of men to 
itself in a slavish manner. Neither is it a mere canon, a writing 
of genuine authority, which simply, as a law, fixes the rule 
what we are to believe, and how we should live. As the word 
of God, it is the book of Life, in the authentic form of writing, 
which gives testimony to the book of Life in the hand of God — 
the purpose of redemption — to the book of Life in the heart 
of the Church — Christ in us ; and awakens, strengthens and 
enriches the life from God through Christ. — Dr. J. P. Lange r 
Commentary on Genesis, p. 6. 

A Book of Growth. — The Bible is a book of growth. It is a 
tree of knowledge. It grows from a seed to a full-sized plant. 
In this way alone is it suited to man. For as the individual 
advances from infancy to full-grown manhood, so the race of 
Adam had its infancy, its boyhood, its manhood, and will have 
its ripe and full age. Such a progress of the human race 
required a progressive book of lessons. Hence, we are not to 
expect every truth to be fully revealed in the earliest books of 
Scripture, but only such germs of truth as will gradually 
develop themselves into a full body of revealed doctrine, and 
in such measure as man can receive and may require at each 
stage of his career. The Bible, therefore, grows not only in 
the continual accessions made to its matter, but also in the 
doctrines which it adds from time to time to the system of 
sacred truth, and in the more and more developed state in 
which all its doctrines are presented. — Dr. Murphy : Commen- 
tary on Genesis , p. 4. 

Take Jesus’ Endorsement to Refute Objections to Inspiration. — 

I do not forget the objections which have been raised against 
the inspiration of the Scriptures, nor the real obscurities with 
which that inspiration is surrounded : if they sometimes trouble 
your hearts, they have troubled mine also. But, at such times* 
in order to revive my faith, I have had only to glance at Jesus 
glorifying the Scriptures in the wilderness ; and I have seen 


THE BIBLE. 


325 


that for all who rely upon Him, the most embarrassing of prob- 
lems is transformed into a historical fact, palpable and clear. 
Jesus, no doubt, was aware of the difficulties connected with 
the inspiration of the Scriptures; and the part of Scripture 
which he quotes, the Old Testament, is that which presents the 
greatest of these difficulties. Did this prevent Him from 
appealing to its testimony with unreserved confidence ? Let 
that which was sufficient for Him, suffice for you. Fear not 
that the rock which sustained the Lord in the hour of His 
temptation and distress, will give way because you lean too 
entirely upon it. Whence comes your perplexity about inspi- 
ration? Is it from the variations of the different manuscripts ? 
These were unavoidable, without a perpetual miracle ; and, in 
the days of Jesus, there were already various readings for 
the Old Testament, which He quotes three times. Is it from 
the little discrepancies of the sacred writers, when they describe 
the same event, such, for instance, as we find in Luke and Mat- 
thew, in the very history which constitutes my text? Discrep- 
ancies quite equal to these exist among the books of the Old 
Testament: for instance, between the Kings and the Chronicles. 
Is it from the degrees of inspiration? Are you afraid lest 
there should be less inspiration in the historical, than the 
prophetic books? Jesus uniformly quotes the Scripture as an 
authority which “cannot be broken and in the passages we 
are now considering, His quotations were all taken from an 
historical book — Deuteronomy. Finally, do you hesitate about 
the theory you should adopt respecting inspiration? what its 
mode or extent, what it leaves to man’s agency, whether it 
directs the mind of the sacred author or his pen? and other 
questions of a similar nature. Here, again, take example by 
Jesus. He enters upon no explanation concerning all these 
speculative points. But when the practical question is at 
issue, when that question is the confidence with which you may 
quote the Scriptures, all the Scriptures, and even a single 
word of the Scriptures — then it is impossible to be more clear, 
more firm, more positive than was He. Go and do likewise. 
Quote the Scriptures as Jesus quoted them [and in the same 
Spirit. — JEd .], and hold respecting inspiration whatever theory 
you will . — Adolphe Monod : TheWeapon in Christ’s Conflict. 

Apology for the State of Early Hebrew Society.— We find some 
of the patriarchs represented as good men, yet occasionally 


326 


THE BIBLE. 


practicing deceit, polygamy and other sins which are discoun- 
tenanced in the later books of the Bible. Is not the rule of 
human conduct, to some extent, a relative one, graduated 
according to man’s knowledge, circumstances and ability? 
Did not He who revealed himself “in many portions and 
in divers manners ” make the revelation of human duty in 
much the same way — not as with the lightning’s blinding flash, 
but like the morning upon the mountains, with a slow and 
gradual illumination ? 

In the comparatively unenlightened times in which many of 
the Old Testament saints lived, many faults and errors of 
theirs may have been mercifully and wisely passed by. Those 
“times of ignorance” God “winked at” overlooked. Acts 
committed in that twilight of the world, in the childhood of 
the race, must be looked at in the light of that period. Nothing 
could be more unjust or unreasonable than to try the patriarchs 
by the ethical standard of a later age. 

Dr. Thomas Arnold* deems that the truest and most faithful 
representation of the lives of the patriarchs which leads us to 
think of “a state of society very little advanced in its 
knowledge of the duties of man to man — a state of society in 
which slavery, polygamy and private revenge were held to be 
perfectly lawful, and which was accustomed to make a very 
wide distinction between false speaking and false swearing.” 
He deprecates the fear that we are “lowering the early 
Scripture history, if we speak of the actors in it as men 
possessing far less than a Christian’s knowledge of right and 
wrong.” Professor Stuartf likewise repudiates the notion of 
the absolute perfection of the earlier dispensation, and adds : 

“ It is only a relative perfection that the Old Testament can 
claim ; and this is comprised in the fact that it answered the 
end for which it was given. It was given to the world, or to 
the Jewish nation, in its minority.” * * * * * 

Now, since our virtue must be judged of in relation to the 
amount of knowledge we possess, it is easy to see how men 
are styled “ good ” who live according to the light they have r 
even though that light may be comparatively feeble. There- 
fore, previous to pronouncing upon the moral character of a 
man or an act, we must take into consideration the date of the 

♦Miscellaneous Works : pp. 149-50 (N. Y. Edition). 

fHistory of Old Testament Canon, p. 415. 


THE BIBLE. 


327 


act, or the time when the man lived, that we may judge the 
man or the act by the proper standard. This simple principle 
will remove many otherwise formidable difficulties. — J. W. 
Haley : Discrepancies of the Bible , p. 5. 

Purpose Proved from End Achieved. — To sum up the argument, I 
explained in a former lecture that it was the peculiarity of the 
Jewish dispensation that it was both present and prospective 
in its design ; that it worked for a future end, while it provided 
also for the existing wants of man. The system having thus a 
double aim, it is obvious that of these two objects, that which 
is prior and takes the first place in the intention of the 
system is the end. In what did the dispensation actually 
result f In a perfect moral standard. Then we only argue 
upon the ordinary rules of evidence when we say that that was 
the intention of the dispensation, and that that was the inten- 
tion even while its morality was actually imperfect. The 
morality of the Author of the dispensation is the true morality 
of the dispensation ; the final morals are the true morals, the 
temporary are but scaffolding ; the true morals are contained 
in the end and in the whole. 

Popular critics of the morality of the Old Testament 
apply the coarsest possible arguments to this subject. They 
think it enough to point to a rude penal law, to a barbarous 
custom, to an extirpating warfare, and it at once follows that 
this is the morality of the Bible ; but this is to judge the 
sculptor from the broken fragment of stone. It was not the 
morality of the Bible unless it was the morality of the Bible 
as a whole, and the whole is tested by the end and not by the 
beginning. 

Revealed Truth Rising Higher and Higher, According to Human 
Capacity. — Scripture was progressive; it went from lower 
stage to higher, and as it rose from one stage to another it 
blotted out the commands of an inferior standard and substi- 
tuted the commands of a higher standard. (See Sermon on 
Mount.) This was the nature of the dispensation as being pro- 
gressive ; it was the essential operation of the Divine govern- 
ment as it acted in that period of the world. The dispensation, 
then, as a whole, did not command the extermination of the 
Canaanites, but a subordinate step did ; and this step passed 
from use and sight as a higher was attained. The fact, though 


328 


THE BIBLE. 


instructive as past history, became obsolete, and was left 
behind as a present lesson ; and the dispensation in its own 
nature was represented by its end. The very lower steps led 
to the end, and were for the sake of leading to it. The critic 
adheres to a class of commands which existed for the moment, 
as facts of the day; but the turning point is the issue, and the 
whole can only be interpreted by the event. The morality of 
Scripture is the morality of the end of Scripture; it is the 
last standard reached, and what everything else led up to. 

Nothing, then, can be cruder and more rude than to identify 
Scripture with the action of the day. In the eyes of some, the 
action of the day is the self-evident morality of Scripture, and 
no argument is thought necessary ; but whatever the facts may 
be, it is a fundamental mistake to suppose that there is any 
conclusion to be got from them, except through the defile of 
an argument. In assuming a God in the dispensation, we 
assume a presiding mind and intention ; and of that intention 
not the immediate fact, but the upshot of the dispensation is 
the test. 

God Stooped to Conquer. — We say the upshot is worth all the 
extraordinary and apparently lowering accommodation, the 
stooping process, and humiliation of the Divine government. 
God allowed, during all those ages, rude men to think of Him 
as one of themselves, acting with the rudest and dimmest idea 
of justice. But He condescended at the moment, to prevail and 
conquer in the end. In entering into and accepting their con- 
fused ideas, He grappled with them. Through what a chaos of 
mistakes did final light arise, and the true idea of justice make 
its way in the world; and God tolerated the mistakes, and 
allowed His commands to go forth in that shape, but the con- 
descension was worth the result. It is the result alone which 
can explain those accommodations ; but the result does explain 
them, and bring them out as successful Divine policy. — J. B. 
Mozley : Ruling Ideas in Early Ages , pp. 250-3. 

Trivial Incidents Lead to Momentous Issues in Life.— The history 
of individuals and communities, as given in the Bible, and 
as transacted in the world, is something like the last voyage of 
Paul, in the Acts. The ship moves, indeed, but is driven hither 
and thither by baffling winds, and meets with strange variety 
of fortunes and disasters — an image of that devious course 


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which, under the providential government of God, marks the 
general history of human life. As there is nothing “so unlike 
a battle as a review,” so there is nothing so unlike real history 
as the plot of a skilfully constructed novel, or a well-adjusted 
drama, where the unities are fairly preserved, and the catastro- 
phe unexceptionable. In each man’s life, and in that of each 
nation, we find “ passages which seemingly 4 lead to nothing ; ’ ” 
though we are sure it is not so, inasmuch as they are part of 
the discipline and schooling of men — part of the “plan de 
T)ieu” — however we may fail to see the connection between 
the means and the end. We often see incidents of apparently 
the most trivial character leading to the most momentous 
issues, and events which thrilled the contemporary world with 
awe or admiration, as often collapsing to nothing; profound 
sagacity stumbling over some simple obstacle, and projects 
long cherished in vain, and at last given up in despair, made, by 
a sudden turn of events, unexpectedly feasible. Civil and 
political history, which records these things, is of a corres- 
ponding complexion. In reading it, we encounter numberless 
digressions and episodes, which seemingly interrupt the course 
of it, and which are inserted, not because they have any vital, 
or, indeed, any visible connection at all with the main purpose 
of the story, but because the historian is bound to record 
what did happen, whether it always conduces to its interest or 
not. In fact, in human life and human history, we see but 
fragments of the “ acts ” and “ scenes ” of that vast drama 
which every rational theist believes to be transacting on the 
theatre of the world. 

Now it is of just such fragments that the historic portions of 
Scripture, for the most part, consist; connected, indeed, but 
just as the incidents of human life and of political and civil 
history are connected, by relations of cause and effect, ot 
proximity of time or place, or contemporaneousness ; but not 
by the laws of unity which imagination prescribes in her 
works. 

Instances in Old Testament.— There are comparatively few 
narratives in the history of the Bible to which these remarks 
do not apply. In reading them, therefore, we are continually 
struck with abrupt terminations of the story, with seemingly 
isolated facts or passages, which end in a cul de sac. We find 
ourselves continually putting questions which our unsatisfied 


330 


THE BIBLE. 


curiosity asks in vain. We wonder what was the history of 
Jacob and his sons, and what their relations, during the twenty 
years of Joseph’s exile? what the degree and effect of those 
suspicions which, from that explosion of feeling which took 
place when Simeon was missed and Benjamin seemed in peril, 
had, it would seem, been smouldering so long in the patriarch’s 
bosom? what became of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and so 
many other prime actors in the history of the Jews? how the 
Acts came to break off with such provoking abruptness in the 
very crisis of Paul’s fate, leaving him a captive at Rome 
between life and death, without a word to indicate the catastro- 
phe? These are specimens of a thousand questions which we 
ask in Biblical and ordinary history alike. — Henry Rogers: 
Superhuman Origin of the Bible, pp. 201-203. 

The Chaldean Story of the Flood.— This tradition, according to 
George Smith (The Chaldean Account of the Genesis , New York, 
1876, p. 286), corresponds with the Biblical account in Genesis in 
twenty-three particulars, although with certain differences. 
The flood is said to be sent, as it would seem, in punishment of 
sin. An ark is to be constructed and covered within and without 
with bitumen. The animals are to be rescued in it. After 
seven days the ark rests upon a mountain. A dove and swallow 
are sent forth, which both return, but a raven that is set at 
liberty does not come back again. A sacrifice is offered after 
the denizens of the ark have left it. The prayer rises that a 
flood may no more visit the earth, which is followed by a divine 
covenant and blessing. While this account differs in detail 
from the one in Genesis, yet these points of similarity cannot 
have been accidental. 

The Account of Bcrosus. — “Xisuthros, the Babylonian Noah, the 
last of the ten antediluvian patriarchs or primitive kings, 
receives in a dream a vision of the God Kronos, who announces 
to him that man will be destroyed on the fifteenth of the month 
Desios by a universal flood, and commands him to build a ship 
for the rescue of himself and his nearest relatives and friends. 
The ship, which Xisuthros, obedient to this command, con- 
structs, has the colossal length of five stadia (over 2,800 feet), 
and a breadth of two stadia (between eleven and twelve hun- 
dred feet). Besides the food for himself, his family and friends, 
Xisuthros takes a large number of animals and birds with him 


THE BIBLE. 


331 


in the ship, and thus saves them also from the universal destruc- 
tion. When the waters begin to diminish, he lets one of the 
birds fly, but it returns without having found a resting place. 
A second, sent out later, returns with some mud on its feet. A 
third does not return. The ark lands upon one of the mountains 
of Armenia. Xisuthros, with his wife and children, leave the 
ark. He rears an altar to the gods and brings them offerings. 
As a reward for this, his piety, he as well as his friends, at a 
later period, are taken to heaven and placed among the gods.” 

We find in the general outlines of this Chaldeo-Babylonian 
myth, which is related to the preceding, a strong resemblance 
to the Biblical narrative. 

Indo-European Traditions. — The Armenian tradition mentions 
Ararat as the landing-place. The Greek tradition, while it 
localizes the deluge in different ways, according to the mythical 
point of view of the various Greek tribes, considers the 
flood in every case as a destruction of all men, with a fe w excep- 
tions. The East Indian tradition is interesting in this respect, 
that the entire human race after the flood are descended from 
Manus, and the seven wise ones who are rescued with him, 
thus corresponding to the eight persons saved in the ark, efls 
mentioned in Genesis (Noah and his wife, his three sons and 
their wives). While the Persians, the Germans, and the Scandi- 
navians have their traditions, they are peculiar in confusing the 
creation and the deluge, Adam and Noah together. — Curtis’ 
Reply to Ingersoll . 

An Infidel Tinker Reconstructing the Ark.— He showed a dis- 
position to make the ark as small as possible, and increase the 
tonnage an 1 demand for space in every way he could. But we 
can save time by proceeding at once to a correct measurement : 

We must first determine the length of the cubit. It was the 
rule then in use. How long was it? In after years the cubit 
was taken by measuring a man’s arm from the elbow to the tip 
of his great finger. This, of course, has left the rule in doubt 
as to its length. Some authors tell us that the cubit in general 
use was something more than two feet; but the cubit of the 
Bible is evidently something shorter. I think that a majority 
of authors regard the cubit of olden times as not less than 
twenty-one inches in length. Supposing this to be sufficiently 
correct, let us turn to the Scriptures and measure the ark. 


332 


THE BIBLE. 


From Genesis vi : 15, we learn that the ark was three hundred 
cubits in length, fifty in width, and thirty in height. Hence, on 
the basis of twenty-one inches to the cubit, the ark was five 
hundred and twenty-five feet in length, eighty-seven and a half 
in width, and fifty-two and a half in height. By multiplying 
the length by the width, we have forty-five thousand nine hun- 
dred and thirty-seven and a half feet on the floor. This, 
multiplied by fifty in height, having subtracted two feet and a 
balf for the two upper floors, gives us two million two hundred 
and ninety-six thousand eight hundred and seventy-five cubic 
feet as the capacity of the ark. 

The question that now demands our attention is how many 
animals would have to go into the ark I According to Agassiz, 
we now have two hundred and fifty thousand species, three- 
fourths of which are insects. These, of course, would occupy 
but a small space, as they would most of them die in a short 
time, and leave their eggs to hatch out in the meantime. The 
fish and water-fowls would not need any such assistance, and 
after deducting all that we would not need to carry over in the 
ark, we have, with the most liberal calculation that could be 
asked for, eleven thousand species. Some very scientific men 
have decided that, at most, but seven thousand would have needed 
a place in the ark ; but we are willing to go to the utmost limits 
of the theory of Agassiz. With this calculation, then, we have 
over two hundred cubic feet for each species, after reserving 
ample room for the family of Noah and the insects. Of course, 
a part of this room would have to be taken up with food. But 
it must be remembered that the great majority of the animals 
were small; and even the larger species of animals may have 
been young, and needed but a small amount of space or food 
either, while the great amount of all these species were birds, 
and small birds at that.— D. E. JDungan: Modern Phases of 
Scepticism , pp. 217-18. 

Rapid Multiplication of Israel.— The rapid multiplication of the 
Israelites in Egypt had been the subject of particular prophecy, 
Gen. xlvi : 3, and of many more general prophecies, Gen. xii: 
2 ; xiii: 16; xv: 5; xxii : 17; xxvi: 4; xxviii: 14; xxxii: 12. 
The bondage of Israel also was predicted, Gen. xv: 13. For 
several generations the chosen people increased but slowly. 
Sarah had but one son ; Rebekah had but two, only one of 
whom was selected to inherit the promises ; and the immediate 


THE BIBLE. 


33a 


family of Jacob, the offspring of two wives and two concubines, 
was not exceptionally large. The rate of increase was larger* 
however, with each generation, until, in Egypt, it became mar- 
velous. The rapid increase of the Israelites began, thus, before 
the subjection of the people to bondage, and was, in fact, the 
occasion of that subjection, vers. 9-11. It ceased, however, 
about the time of the Exodus, Acts vii: 17, 18; comp. Num. i: 
46, and Num. xxvi: 51. It was owing to the special blessing of 
God upon natural agencies. The following circumstances 
probably tended to produce it : 1. The Israelites led a pastoral 
and healthful life. 2. Murphy : u They had scope and verge 
in a thinly-peopled country ; and they were placed in the best 
of the land, Gen. lvii : 11.” 3. They were comparatively free 
from moral impurities. 4. Marriage was essential to the dignity 
and social standing of the Israelites, as it is to this day; so 
that but few remained single. 5. Marriage was contracted at 
a very early age ; the climate stimulated the development of 
both mind and body; the girl of twelve and the boy of thirteen 
were marriageable, and the usual age of marriage was probably 
from Sixteen to eighteen. 6. The blessing of offspring was 
highly valued, as it is still in the East ; the wife was esteemed 
in proportion to the number of her children ; and childlessness 
was regarded as the greatest calamity ; Gen. xvi : 2 ; xxix : 31 ; 
xxx : 1, 14 ; Deut. vii : 14 ; 1 Sam. i : 6 ; ii : 5 ; iv : 20 ; 2 Sam. vi : 
23 ; xviii : 18 ; 2 K. iv : 14 ; Isai. xlvii : 9 ; Jer. xx : 15 ; Hos. ix : 
14; Esth. v : 11 ; Ps. cxxvii : 3, 5 ; Eccl. vi : 3. 7. The climate 
of Egypt was famous in antiquity for its efficacy in promoting 
prosperous births. 8. Canon Cooke, speaking of modern 
Egypt: “In no province does the population increase so 
rapidly as in that occupied by the Israelites.” — Franklin 
Johnson : Moses and Israel . 

The Ten Plagues.— All the plagues were, in one aspect, judg- 
ments; all were, in another aspect, merciful warnings. But the 
earlier were intended chiefly to alarm and call to repentance ; 
the last was more nearly a work of pure retribution. The 
general relation of the last plague to those by which it was 
preceded is well stated by Kurtz : “ Of the previous plagues 
some, the first and second, had come, at a signal from Moses, 
from the beneficent river of Egypt; others, the third and 
fourty, from the fertile soil of the country, and others from the 
pure air which pervaded the land ; all the elements which 


334 


THE BIBLE. 


were at work in Egypt had been one after another turned into 
a curse. And when that which was peculiarly Egyptian had 
been all exhausted, the countries round about sent their 
plagues into Egypt also ; locusts came from the desert of 
Arabia, and the Sirocco with its impenetrable darkness from 
the Sahara. Yet all was apparently in vain. But this had been 
merely introductory and preparatory to the last decisive stroke. 
The tenth plague was not called forth by either the rod or hand 
of Moses, nor did it proceed from the water, the earth, or the 
air; but the hand of Jehovah himself was stretched forth. In 
the tenth plague the idea and intention of all the plagues were 
embodied and fulfilled. It was thought of first, Ex. iv : 22, 23, 
but it was necessarily the last to appear. If it had been the 
first to appear, the fact would not have been so completely and 
universally displayed that Jehovah was the Lord in the midst 
of the land, Ex. viii : 22, the Lord over the water, the earth, 
the air ; over gods and men, cattle and plants, and that there 
was none like him in all the earth, Ex. ix: 14. For this 
purpose it was necessary that there should be many miracles 
wrought in the land of Egypt, Ex. xi: 9; and it was also 
requisite that they should have both sharply defined natural 
features and an unmistakably miraculous character, in order 
that freedom of choice might be left for faith or unbelief. 
But the tenth plague bore upon the face of it a purely super- 
natural character ; and because it was the tenth, that is, the 
one which gave a finish and completeness to the whole, it 
exhibited in a clear and unequivocal manner the design of all 
the plagues from the very commencement ; the last furnished 
the key to the entire series.” The obstinacy of Pharaoh in 
refusing to let the Israelites depart until compelled by a series 
of terrible plagues was the providential occasion of the 
pian if e station of God to the heathen and to his people ; it was 
thus overruled to the glory of God, Ex. ix: 16. But the last 
plague, more terrible than the others, was the chief agent in 
the manifestation of the divine name. 

The Significance of the Conflict in Egypt.— Murphy : “To 
understand the deep import of the conflict before us, let us 
bear in mind that now, for the first time since the dispersion 
of mankind, the opposition between the children of God and 
the children of disobedience is coming out into broad daylight. 
Egypt, that was the kind fosterer of the chosen family, has 


THE BIBLE. 


335 


now become the persecutor of Israel, and the avowed antago- 
nist of God. The present struggle is therefore no raid for the 
gathering of booty, nor encounter between two rival nations, 
nor expedition for the selfish ends of an earthly ambition. It 
is the controversy between light and darkness, in which the 
God of heaven and earth manifests His presence and power on 
behalf of His people and against the defiant nation. This 
nation is for the time being the representative of all heathen- 
dom, which is the kingdom of the prince of darkness ; and the 
battle now fought is the model and type of all future warfare 
between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. 
Hence it rises to a transcendent importance in the ways of 
God with man, and fitly holds a place even in the preface to 
the ten commandments.” Ex. xx: 2. Kurtz: u The contest 
was essentially a war on the part of Jehovah against the Gods 
of Egypt.” And as the Egyptian Gods were the most cele- 
brated in the world, their discomfiture was to be the discom- 
fiture of the heathen gods in general. It is probable also that 
the idols and temples and magicians of Egypt were connected 
with a spiritual realm of sin by which they were used for the 
deception of men. Acts xvi: 16; 1 Cor. x: 20, 21. The 
plagues of Egypt were therefore a defeat of Satan and his 
angels in the nation over which they exercised most perfect 
control. See Ex. xii : 12. 

In what, then, consisted the miraculous character of these 
plagues ? 1. There was a miracle in the prediction of each one, 
and in its occurrence at the command of Moses. 2. Their inten- 
sity was miraculous. 3. The remarkable succession of ten in a 
single year, sufficiently severe to cripple the power of Egypt, 
proves them miraculous. 4. The exemption of the Israelites 
from the most severe of the plagues marks them as produced 
and guided by the divine power. 5. The remarkable intelligence 
which administered the last plague, so that it smote only the 
first-born of man and beast, proves the presence of Godin its 
operation. 6. The cessation of each plague at the intercession 
of Moses marks it as a miracle. It is instructive to trace the 
analogy of the plagues, with the phenomena of Egypt; for, 
1. This analogy proves the account to be veritable history; 
no myth and no romance originating in Palestine could so 
completely preserve the coloring of Egypt from beginning to 
end. 2. It shows us that God is the ruler of nature. The 


336 


THE BIBLE. 


Idolatry of Eygpt, as of all ancient heathendom, was the deifica- 
tion of nature; each god represented originally some object 
or force of the universe ; the sun, the moon, the principle of 
life, the dawn, the winds, were symbolized by the idols of 
antiquity. It was the purpose of God to assert his power over 
all these creatures of his hand and these forces of his realm ; 
such is his express declaration through Moses, Ex. ix : 29. We 
still need the lesson ; for there are those who teach that God 
stands afar from nature, exerting no control over its movements* 
3. The gods of each country were supposed to have peculiar 
power within the limits of that country. The lesson of the 
plagues was, therefore, the more instructive to both the Egyp- 
tians and the Israelites that Jehovah took those forces and 
agencies which were peculiar to Egypt and asserted at once his 
supremacy over them, and the impotence of the deities who 
were supposed to hold them specially in charge. 

The Order of the Plagues. — The plagues were arranged in a 
significant order. Murphy: “The Jewish Eabbis have not 
been slow to observe the regular order in which these succes- 
sive strokes are arranged, and the gradual advance which they 
make from the external to the internal, and from the mediate to 
the immediate hand of God. They are in number ten, which 
is one of the numbers denoting perfection. They are divided 
first into nine and one ; the last one standing clearly apart from 
all the others, in the awful shriek of woe which it draws forth 
from every Egyptian home. The nine are arranged in threes. 
In the first of each three the warning is given to Pharaoh in 
the morning, Ex. vii:15; viii : 20 ; ix : 13. In the first and 
second of each three the plague is announced beforehand, Ex* 
viii : 1 ; ix : 1 ; x : 1 ; in the third not ; Ex. viii : 16 ; ix : 1 ; x : 21. 
At the third the magicians acknowledge the finger of God, Ex. 
viii : 19 ; at the sixth they cannot stand before Moses, Ex. ix : 
11 ; and at the ninth Pharaoh refuses to see the face of Moses 
any more, Ex. x: 28. In the first three Aaron uses the rod; in 
the second three it is not mentioned ; in the third three Moses 
uses it, though in the last of them only his hand is mentioned* 
All these marks of order lie on the face of the narrative, and 
point to a deeper order of nature and reason out of which they 
spring. 

“The gradation of the severity of these strokes is no less 
obvious. In the first three no distinction is made among the 


THE BIBLE. 


337 


inhabitants of the land; in the remaining seven a distinction is 
made between the Israelites, who are shielded from, and the 
Egyptians, who are exposed to the stroke. In these seven, 
which are peculiar to the Egyptians, the order is the reverse of 
that in the work of creation. Three refer to the animal 
creation, and three refer to the vegetable world, the support of 
animal life. The last of these six is darkness, the opposite 
of light, the product of the first day; and the seventh is 
death. The first three affect the comfort and health of 
man ; the next three take away the staff of life ; then 
comes death itself, and the work of destruction is complete.” 

The Duration of the Plagues. — It is probable that the plagues 
extended through a period of several months. The first mes- 
sage of Moses to Pharaoh was delivered after the early harvest, 
in April or May, when alone the Israelites could gather stub- 
ble, Ex. v : 12. If the first plague, which turned the water of 
the Nile into blood, was connected with the annual inundation, 
as in the notes of the lesson we have considered highly prob- 
able, it occurred in June or July. The last plague, we know 
from the date of the Passover, took place on the fourteenth of 
Nisan, or about the first of April. Thus an interval of just 
one year was employed in the controversy of God with Pha- 
raoh; and the plagues were distributed over a period of nine or 
ten months. The frogs, which even to-day constitute one of 
the plagues of Egypt, usually appear in September ; and the 
second plague probably occurred at that time. The seventh 
plague occurred about the middle of February or the first of 
March, the only season when hail-storms are expected in 
Egypt, and when the flax is^in blossom, and the barley in 
the ear, Ex. ix: 31. The succeeding plagues came in more 
rapid succession than those which preceded, Ex. ix: 14. 
The locusts came while the leaves were still green, towards 
the close of March, Ex. x: 4-15. The supposition of 
this considerable period has several advantages. 1. Hengs- 
tenberg : “ It must have had a peculiar significance, if Jeho- 

vah went through an entire revolution, as it were, with the 
Egyptians, and for once displayed his miraculous power in 
connection with the ordinarily recurring circle of natural phe- 
nomena.” Thus, at every season of the year, whether sacred 
or common, Jehovah triumphed. 2. We are better enabled to 
understand the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart ; the breathing- 
Y 


338 


THE BIBLE. 


spell between the plagues would afford him opportunity to 
strengthen himself in unbelief. 3. We are enabled to see how 
the Israelites were prepared for immediate departure, when 
they were thrust out of the land. The curses sent in their behalf, 
from many of which they were exempt, would give them cour- 
age to expect their liberation. After the first few experiences 
of divine anger, Pharaoh would relax his tyranny ; and we hear 
no more of taskmasters and cries. The people would gradu- 
ally give themselves to preparation. Towards the close, under 
the direction of Moses, they seem to have been fully prepared 
to start, except that they had not cooked sufficient food ; and 
they had collected together in a comparatively limited district. 
Ex. xii: 37, anticipating the result. We can scarcely explain 
this, except upon the hypothesis that several months elapsed 
between the beginning and the close of the plagues. 

The Evidences Attesting the Truth of This History.-Besides 
those which attest the truth of the book of Exodus and the 
whole Bible, there are some which specially attest the truth of 
the record immediately before us. 1. Canon Cook: “It is ad- 
mitted by critics that the deliverance of the Israelites must have 
been the result of heavy calamities inflicted upon the Egyp- 
tians, who certainly would never have submitted to so great a loss 
had they been in a state to prevent it. Nor could it have been 
effected by a successful uprising of the Israelites, who were 
not in a position to resist the power of Egypt, and who, had 
such been the case, would certainly have preserved the record 
of a war issuing in so glorious a result. It is also generally 
admitted that the calamities, whatever they might have been, 
did not include the overthrow of the Egyptian power by 
foreign enemies or national insurrections. No notice of either, 
as Knobel remarks, is found in Hebrew traditions ; and it may 
be added, that in neither of the reigns to which the Exodus 
has been assigned are there any indications of either calamity. 
Egypt was in the highest state of power and prosperity 
through the whole period within which all agree that the 
Exodus took place. A succession of such plagues as are 
described in the Exodus must therefore be assumed, and is, in 
fact, accepted by critics, as the only conceivable cause of the 
result.” 2. The whole narrative of the plagues is so minutely 
accurate in its allusions to Egyptian manners and customs, to 
the phenomena of Egypt, to its physical features, to the soil, 


THE BIBLE. 


339 


climate, productions, natural history and meteorology, as to 
render it certain that it is neither a myth nor a forgery. 3. 
The Passover is admitted to have been instituted about the 
time of the Exodus, and to commemorate that great event. 
J. P. Thompson : u The Passover is a perpetual witness for 
the Exodus. But the Passover contains features so unnatural, 
so remote in themselves from mere imagination or invention, 
that one cannot conceive of their origin, except in some fact of 
actual occurrence. This is true especially of the time and 
manner of killing the lamb, and the sprinkling of the blood on 
the side-posts and the upper door-posts of the houses. As the 
observance itself witnesses for the departure out of Egypt, so 
do these unique features of it witness for the facts which are 
recorded as having attended its own institution. But the tenth 
decisive plague was only the culmination of a series, and the 
whole narrative must stand or fall together. The plagues were 
actual occurrences . — Franklin Johnson: Moses and Israel, pp. 
36-7. 

Antiquity of Deuteronomy. — In assigning this antiquity to the 
book of Deuteronomy I run directly counter to almost the 
whole critical school. I have re-examined the question, I trust 
dispassionately (I hold such questions to be entirely irrelevant 
to the truth of our religion), and adhere to my conclusion. It 
must first be remembered that there are two distinct questions 
— whether Deuteronomy was written by Moses, or whether it is 
a faithful contemporaneous record of the words and acts of 
Moses. In either case all will admit the closing chapter, describ- 
ing the death of Moses, to have been added after that event. In 
discussing the internal evidence (I speak not now of the evidence 
from style and language) there are two separate and distinct 
points of inquiry : 1. Is that evidence in favor of its belonging to 
this early period; or are there objections to this conclusion, 
fatal and unanswerable ? 2. Can it be assigned to any other 
period of the Jewish annals with greater probability, or without 
raising difficulties infinitely more perplexing ? In the first place 
nothing can be more probable than that the law-giver, now in the 
presence of a new generation — (the old generation had heard 
the delivery of the Law) ; when the wanderings in the wilderness 
had come to an end ; when the Israelites were to cease to be a 
Bedouin tribe, and to become a settled agricultural people ; that 
Moses, at the close of his mission, at the close of his own life, 


340 


THE BIBLE. 


should recapitulate, if I may use the word, codify the Law, which 
to all appearance had been delivered in fragments, at different 
times. The Law in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Num- 
bers, lies in confusion, with no apparent order or sequence, and 
interspersed with the history. It contains laws on entirely 
different subjects, following each other with no natural connec- 
tion. Is it extraordinary that Moses should now reiterate in 
the most solemn and impressive way the sanctity of the Law, 
the penalties and the promises; that he should give as it were 
a shorter and more popular manual of the former Divine legisla- 
tion? There might be even modifications and corrections, a 
harmonizing of the provisions, and in some degree an adaptation 
to the change of circumstances. The wild desert would now 
be left behind; the promised land, with its settled life, expand 
more fully. Certainly in Deuteronomy the people seem to be 
in a transitional state. Strange if a late imaginative writer, or 
even compiler, should preserve this singular accuracy — if I 
may so say, this naturalness of detail. Even in Deuteronomy 
there is still great want of order and arrangement ; the laws do 
not follow each other in natural sequence ; they pass from one 
subject to another, apparently with no connection or relation to 
each other; they are more or less mingled with historical 
incidents. But all this seems to me to belong to an early, 
inartificial period of composition; it is precisely that which a 
later writer or compiler would have labored to avoid. The 
ancient legislation would afford materials for a code, the later 
would have framed a code. Read the book of Deuteronomy, 
and fairly estimate the difficulties which occur — and that there 
are difficulties I acknowledge — such as the appointment at this 
time of Ebal and Gerizim as the scene of the rehearsal of the 
Law by Moses or a writer on the other side of the Jordan (the 
prophetic power of Moses is excluded from such an argument), 
though one cannot suppose Moses or the Israelites at that time 
unacquainted with the main features, the general topography 
of Ois-Jordanic Palestine. Then read it again, and endeavor to 
assign it to any other period in the Jewish annals, and judge 
whether difficulties do not accumulate twentyfold. In this 
case how would the signs of that period have inevitably 
appeared, anachronisms, a later tone of thought, of incident, 
of manners! Even on his special point, at what period would 
Ebal and Gerizim have been chosen as the two equal antagonis- 


THE BIBLE. 


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tic centers of Jewish reverence and sanctity? If it is a fiction, 
it is certainly a most felicitous fiction . — Bean Milman : History 
of the Jews , Revised Edition , 1875, Vol. 1 st,pp. 252-3. 

Destruction of Canaanitcs. — 1 . The Canaanites had received re- 
peated warnings and instructions, in the general Deluge, in the 
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, in the holy example of 
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Melchizedek, and in the slow 
advance of Israel from Egypt to their borders attended by 
miracles which caused them to tremble, Ex. xv: 14, 16. 2. God 
not only sent them these lessons, but he bore with them many 
centuries in patience, while they abused his grace. All had 
been in vain ; they were incorrigible ; they grew worse. 3. T. 
E. Espin: “It is impossible to acknowledge God as the moral 
governor of the earth, and not to admit that it may be right, or 
even necessary, on occasions, for him to remove, summarily, 
from his dominions a mass of hopeless depravity, such as these 
nations had long been.” 4. The same writer continues : “Nor 
is it any real objection to this view that the innocent children 
of the Canaanites were indiscriminately slaughtered, Josh, vi: 
17, 21. To say nothing of the practical difficulties which the 
sparing of infants would involve, when the parents generally 
were put to death, and to pass by the obvious parallel supplied 
by the wholesale destruction caused, for example, by an earth- 
quake ; it is evident that since God’s dealings with men do not 
terminate with this life, he can redress hereafter, inequalities 
arising out of the acts of his providence here.” 5. If we admit 
that God is justified in some instances in extirpating the incor- 
rigibly wicked, we must also admit that it can make no difference 
to those who are thus destroyed, whether the agent of their 
destruction is a natural catastrophe, like an earthquake, or an 
army divinely commissioned for the purpose. 6. It is objected 
that in commissioning the Israelites to exterminate the Canaan- 
ites, God sanctioned cruelty. But if it be sanctioning cruelty 
to direct a human agent to execute a lawful sentence against 
crime, then are we involved in the charge when we elect officers 
to perform the same duty towards criminals. 7. The slaughter 
of enemies in moments of passion, without just cause, and 
without due authority, may cultivate cruel instincts. But the 
solemn execution of the law, with no heat of passion, but with 
an awful sense of the crime to be avenged, and with a religious 
reference to the command of God, cannot produce such an evil 


342 


THE BIBLE. 


effect. 8. To employ the Israelites in the execution of the 
fearful sentence, was adapted to inspire them with horror of 
the crimes thus severely punished, and to prevent their 
intimacy with the surrounding heathen and the contamination 
which intimacy would have produced. 9. Had not the Israel- 
ites been thus inspired with detestation of idolatry and its 
attendant immoralities, and guarded from pollution by the abhor- 
rence in which their idolatrous neighbors held them, they would 
probably have sunk soon into the most degraded heathenism. 
Their sacred books would have been destroyed or corrupted. 
The world would have been lost. The terrible warfare which 
they waged punished the wrong-doer, and preserved for future 
ages the knowledge of the true God, and prevented such an 
eclipse of faith as would have rendered the mission of Christ 
impossible or futile. 

We subjoin a few extracts from critics who will not be sus- 
pected of undue reverence for God’s word, showing that even 
skepticism is able to appreciate the justice and mercy which 
ordered the destruction of the Canaanites. Ewald : “That a 
people, sinking ever more deeply into divisions and moral per- 
verseness, as the Canaanites, in great part at least, then were, 
should fall before another people in whom there arises the 
harmonious strength of a life trusting in divine powers, and so 
striving upward, is an eternal necessity.” Arnold: “It is 
better that the wicked should be destroyed a hundred times 
over than that they should tempt those who are yet innocent 
to join their company. Let us think what might have been our 
fate, and the fate of every nation under heaven, at this hour, 
had the sword of the Israelites done its work more sparingly. 

* * * * Had the heathen lived in equal numbers, and, still 
more, had they intermarried largely with the Israelites, how 
was it possible, humanly speaking, that any sparks of God’s 
truth should have survived to the coming of Christ? * * * 
In these contests, on the fate of one of these nation^ of Pales- 
tine, the happiness of the human race depended. The Israel- 
ites fought not for themselves only, but for us.” Stanley : 

“ It has been well shown that the results of the discipline of 
the Jewish nation may be summed up in two points, a settled 
national belief in the unity and spirituality of God, and an 
acknowledgment of the paramount importance of purity, as a 
part of morality ; and further, that these two ideas were car- 


THE BIBLE. 


343 


dinal points in the education of the world. It was these two 
points especially which were endangered by the contact and 
contamination of the idolatry and the sensuality of the Pheni- 
cian tribes .’’ — Franklin Johnson: Moses and Israel . 

Explanation of Alleged Immoralities. — Here may properly be 
considered an objection derived from certain alleged wrongs 
and immoralities in some parts of Scripture. 

Some of these are just such wrongs as we find in nature, 
such as the destruction of people by hostile armies instead of 
famine or pestilence, fire or storm — making the innocent suffer 
for the sins of the guilty — visiting the iniquities of the fathers 
upon the children, even to the third and fourth generation, 
etc. All this happens every day, both in nature and 
Providence. 

Others are not immoralities at all ; the manners and social 
condition of ancient times were quite diverse from ours, and the 
alleged difficulty arises wholly from bringing the unsuspecting 
innocence of childhood in collision with the fastidious depravity 
of maturer years. 

A true account of the ancient misdeeds of men, otherwise 
good and holy, is not necessarily immoral or of immoral ten- 
dency. This depends wholly on the spirit and purpose of the 
narrative. A divine revelation must be true to facts, and give 
a strictly accurate view of human nature, and not a false or 
even a flattering one. 

A revelation is designedly progressive, and morally progres- 
sive, as well as intellectually and religiously, socially and 
politically, as it must be if accountable men, and not creatures 
merely passive, are to be trained, freely and not compulsively, 
from the infancy of the race to its maturity ; and we have not 
and do not pretend to have the perfection of morals till we 
have perfection of revelation in the New Testament. — Prof. 
Calvin F. Stowe : History of the Books of the Bible, p. 21. 

Go to the Bible to Learn Truth, not to Prove Opinions.— All 

Protestants assert that the way of salvation is clearly defined 
in the Sacred Volume, so as to be plain to the most ordinary 
comprehension. If, then, erroneous views be formed from it, 
the cause is to be sought, not in the Bible, but in the mind of 
the errorist himself. He comes to the Scriptures as an advocate 
of preconceived opinions or doctrines, to seek for proofs and 


THE BIBLE. 


344 

arguments by which to sustain these views, and not, as a 
sincere enquirer after truth, to engage in a process of careful 
investigation , and with a mind prepared to follow whitherso- 
ever the truth shall lead. Hence it is, that all errorists and 
parties holding sentiments the most discordant, have recourse 
alike to the Bible for their proofs. They seek not for the truth 
which is in the Bible, but for proofs of the errors with which 
their minds are previously imbued — for something to sustain 
the particular system to which they are inclined. To them the 
Bible is a mere storehouse of arms and ammunition for partisan 
warfare. It has no well-defined plan or purpose of its own, but 
is merely a collection of proof — texts, from which any one is at 
liberty to select whatever may appear to suit his purpose, 
without respect to the context or the laws of interpretation 
applied to all other writings. Thus it is that the Bible answers 
the purposes of all parties equally well. As with the mirror of 
the Arabian tale, each one can see in it only what he wishes to 
see ; and as each party wishes to see only itself, the Divine 
miror reflects to its view no other image. — Dr. R. Richardson . 

A Great Surface to Survey. — The very conditions of a Revela- 
tion that has been consigned to various records in the course 
of thirty centuries involve a liability to the renewal of excep- 
tive argumentation, which easily finds points of lodgment 
upon so large a surface. * * * * The very same 
extent of surface from which a better reason, and a more 
healthful moral feeling gather an irresistible conviction of the 
nearness of God throughout it, furnishes to an astute and 
frigid critical faculty, a thousand and one instances over which 
to proclaim petty triumph. — Isaac Taylor: Preface to “Spirit 
of Hebrew Poetry ” 

Light Enough and Darkness Enough.— God willing to be re- 
vealed to those who seek Him with their whole heart, and hidden 
from those who as cordially fly from Him, has so regulated 
the means of knowing Him, as to give indications of 
himself, which are plain to those who seek Him, and obscure to 
those who seek Him not. There is light enough for those 
whose main wish it is to see; and darkness enough for 
those of an opposite disposition. — Pascal : Thoughts , Chap. xiii. 

A Good Illustration. — If any one, having access to the journals 
of the Lords and Commons, to the books of the treasury, war 


THE BIBLE. 


345 


office, privy council, and other public documents, should at this 
day write a history of the reigns of George the First and Second, 
and should publish it without his name, would any man, three or 
four hundreds or thousands of years hence, question the author- 
ity of that book when he knew that the whole British nation 
had received it as an authentic book from the time of the first 
publication to the age in which he lived ? This supposition is in 
point. The books of the Old Testament were composed from 
the records of the Jewish nation, and they have been received 
as true by that nation, from the time in which they were 
written to the present day. — Watson's Apology, p. 47. 

A Summary of Objections and Their Weakness. — The sacred 
records of the first period have come down to us in the shape 
of five books, the first of which is introductory, while the 
remaining four present us with the history of an individual, 
Moses, and of the Jewish people under his guidance. Criti- 
cally speaking, it is of the last importance to know by whom the 
books which contain this history were written. Now, the 
ancient, positive and uniform tradition of the Jews assigned 
the authorship to the Pentateuch, with the exception of the last 
chapter of Deuteronomy, to Moses ; and this tradition is prima 
facie evidence of the fact, such as at least throws the burden 
of proof upon those who call it in question. It is an admitted 
rule of all sound criticism, that books are to be regarded as 
proceeding from the writers whose names they bear, unless 
very strong reasons indeed can be adduced to the contrary. 
In the present instance the reasons which have been urged are 
weak and puerile in the extreme ; they rest, in part, on mis- 
conceptions of the meanings of passages, in part, upon inter- 
polations into the original text, which are sometimes very plain 
and palpable. Mainly, however, they have their source in arbi- 
trary, unproved hypotheses, as that, a cotemporary writer 
would not have introduced an account of miracles ; that the 
culture indicated by the book is beyond the age of Moses ; 
that if Moses had written the book he would not have 
spoken of himself in the third person ; that he would have 
given a fuller and more complete account of his own his- 
tory ; and that he would not have applied to himself terms of 
praise and expressions of honor. 

It is enough to observe of these objections, that they are 
such as might equally be urged against the genuineness of 


346 


THE BIBLE. 


Paul’s epistles, which is allowed even by Strauss (Life of 
Jesus, vol. 1, page 60): against that of the works of Homer, 
Chaucer, and indeed of all writers in advance of their age 
against Caesar’s Commentaries, and Xenophon’s Expedition of 
Cyrus — against the Acts of the Apostles : (Strauss allows that 
“Acts” may be the work of Luke. Life of Jesus, vol. 1, page 
60): and against the Gospel of John. Paul relates contempo- 
rary miracles ; Homer and Chaucer exhibit a culture and a tone 
which, but for them, we should have supposed unattainable in 
their age ; Caesar and Xenophon write throughout in the third 
person; Luke omits all account of his own doings at Philippi; 
John applies to himself the most honorable of titles — “the 
disciple whom Jesus loved.” A priori conceptions of how an 
author of a certain time and country would write, of what he 
would say or not say, or how he would express himself, are 
among the weakest of all presumptions, and must be regarded 
as outweighed by a very small amount of positive testimony 
to authorship. — Prof. Rawlinson, Editor of Herodotus' History . 

We have been engaged with a dark period — a period when 
the nations of the world had little converse with one another, 
when civilization was but beginning, when the knowledge of 
letters was confined within narrow bounds, when no country 
but Ijlgypt had a literature, and when Egypt herself was in a 
state of unusual depression, and had little communication with 
nations beyond her borders. We could not expect to obtain 
for such a period any great amount of profane illustration. Yet 
the Jewish history of even this obscure time has been found 
to present points of direct agreement with the Egyptian 
records, scanty as they are for it, with the Phoenician annals, 
with the traditions of the Syrians of Damascus, and with those 
of the early inhabitants of Xorthern Africa. 

What the Biblical Examiner lias Found. —It has also appeared 
that the Hebrew account of the time is in complete harmony 
with all that we otherwise know of Western Asia, at the 
period in question, of its political condition, its civilization, its 
arts and sciences, its manners and customs, its inhabitants. 
Illustrations of these points have been furnished by the 
Assyrian inscriptions, the Assyrian and Persian palaces, the 
Phoenician coins and histories, and the earliest Greek poetry. 
Xor is it possible to produce from authentic history any con- 


THE BIBLE. 


347 


tradiction of this or any other portion of the Hebrew records. 
When such a contradiction has seemed to be found, it has 
invariably happened that in the progress of historical inquiry, 
the author from whom it proceeds has lost credit, and finally 
come to be regarded as an utterly untrustworthy authority. 

[Let it be remembered that this statement is from one of the most trust- 
worthy and competent historians of modern times, viz : Prof. George 
Rawlinson, Historic Evidences, p. 99. — Ed.] 

The paradox in the text is not at all diminished, rather, in 
many respects, increased, by the fond theories adopted by 
many critics of modern times, who assure the Jews of what 
their halting patriotism failed to find out for themselves — that 
their annals are fabulous, the inventions of a late age, and 
successfully palmed on the nation as their true history. 

Do the Jews Know their Own Acts! — Its advocates are at infinite 
variance among themselves ; the periods they assign for the 
imagined origin of the books differ by many centuries, and 
are in any case determined by the merest conjecture, which 
wanders through all epochs, from the time of Judges to that of 
Malachi, “ seeking rest and finding none.” 

On the other hand, every such hypothesis is in defiance of 
the vehement and consentient testimony of the Jewish nation 
in every age ; of the astonishing proofs they have given of the 
care and honesty with which they have preserved what they so 
revere ; and in the absence of any, the faintest, indication that 
their nation possessed any tradition of the persons by whom, 
or the time when, these libellous annals were substituted for 
the true, and, disgraceful as they are, adopted without a protest 
or a suspicion by the people ! The very names of those who 
operated so gigantic a fraud, and inflicted at the same time such 
a stab on national vanity, have been suffered to drop into 
oblivion ; while the victims, who could not but be aware when 
these pretended chronicles of an older time were first attempted 
to be palmed upon them, clutched the ignominious records to 
their hearts, affirmed that they contained God’s own account 
of their nation ; and not only clung to their shame, but lied, 
and lied universally, that the stigma might abide forever ! 

If the Bible be not what it professes to be, the conduct of 
the Jews abounds with paradoxes. On the other hand, sup- 
posing it to relate a true history of the Jewish people, they 
vanish. It is possible to conceive that the successive genera- 


348 


THE BIBLE. 


tions of Israelites, being conscious that the conduct charged 
upon their ancestors and themselves was truly charged, would 
accept the recital, and submit in silence to the unmeasured 
reproaches cast upon them — though even this would demand 
the indisputable notoriety of the facts. It is impossible, indeed, 
to point out any entire community, which at a late period of its 
existence has accepted mythical fabrications as its genuine 
history; certainly it would never do so unless they enor- 
mously flattered its vanity, nor even then without provoking 
suspicion and protest in many quarters. But is it imaginable 
that it would do this, with absolute unanimity and in absolute 
silence, when stigma and invective marked every page ? Only 
those who have carefully read the Pentateuch, the Historical 
books, and the Prophets, with express view of ascertaining the 
extent of this element, can have any adequate idea of the 
space occupied by invective, rebuke, and reproaches addressed 
to the nation, though mingled, it is true, with the most 
inimitable touches of pathetic remonstrance on their willfulness, 
wickedness and folly . — Henry Rogers: Superhuman Origin of 
Bible, Appendix III. 

The Bible Not a Book of Shreds and Patches. — The Mahometans, 
for example, very rightly regard the Koran as one, for it is so ; 
let the discrepancies, or contradictions, or extravagancies be 
what they may, it was the work, though composed and given to 
the world in fragments, of one mind. The world did not make 
the unity, it simply acknowledged it. But if the Bible be not 
one, those who believe it to be so have made it so ; and if they 
made it so without reason, we ought to be able to assign some 
sufficient cause for this singular consentaneousness of halluci- 
nation. If the Bible is a mere collection of “shreds and 
patches;” if its books really originated in purely natural causes, 
and have no internal cohesion other than belongs to human 
writings produced in the course of many centuries by the same 
nation, there would seem no more reason why the book of 
Deuteronomy, the prophecies of Isaiah, the Gospel of Mark, 
and the Epistle to the Romans should have been imagined to 
form parts of one book, than why a collection of a score or two 
of fragments from any other literature should be so considered. 
— Henry Rogers : Superhuman Origin of the Bible, p. 162. 

The Prophetic Dilemma. — The impossibility of prophecy (as of 
miracles) is a pure dogma, or prejudice rather, of pseudo- 


THE BIBLE. 


349 


science, unworthy of true science, and as much a generalization 
beyond the data, — as much a precipitate “anticipation” of facts, 
— as any that Bacon has exposed and denounced in his “Novum 
Organum.” It is a position which a theist, in any proper sense, 
can hardly be imagined to maintain ; nor probably has there ever 
been one who would venture thus to limit the Divine omnipo- 
tence and omniscience. There would be this additional absurdity 
in it, that it would deny to God what many modern savans believe 
will one day be possible to man. We are assured that, in virtue 
of advancing science, man is at length to endue himself with 
the power of pre-vision, whether God ever gives it to him or 
not. To say, then, that God cannot speak to us by prophecy, 
is to say, either that He is not so well acquainted with the 
relations of all possible events, — with the whole chain of 
antecedents and consequents, — as man will one day be ; or that 
having that knowledge, He cannot impart it, though man (when 
he has thus equipped himself) certainly can! 

On the other hand, to say that prophecy is absolutely 
incredible, not because God cannot , but because He certainly will 
not give it, is little better ; for in the first place it is impossible 
to imagine how we are to ascertain this ; and secondly, it is not 
very compatible with the above speculation of man’s possibly 
becoming a seer himself. For if that shall ever be the case, it 
must still be because God, who gifted him with such powers, 
wills it; and if so, one would surmise it to be not improbable that 
God might, in some cases, anticipate a gift which it seems He wills 
man should one day possess ; and confer, for special purposes, 
on some favored persons, what He designs that certain sages 
and savans, with more liberal hands, shall hereafter bestow on 
the world at large ! — Henry Rogers : Superhuman Origin of the 
the Bible, Appendix IV. 

Upon the wild and uncultivated pagan ground prophecy 
received no systematic attention, and had no regular home, 
no fitting receptacle in which to lodge. The tradition 
of the Sibyl points indeed to the existence of prophetic 
minds in the pagan world, which had in dim vision before 
them some great future change in the order of things here; 
but nothing came of this prophetic gleam; it founded 
nothing, it erected no institutions, no framework, no body, no 
Church ; it passed away and wandered into space, and only 
returned in desultory and dreamy sounds which interested but 
did not rouse the mind. 


350 


THE BIBLE. 


What Prophecy Was. — Prophecy was a sweet but broken strain, 
whose notes floated on the air, only to be scattered immediately 
by some rough wind ; and a transient and fitful music only 
entranced the ear, to die away in feeble cadences and 
fragments. 

Prophecy was like one of those thoughts which just come into 
the mind and vanish ; and we cannot catch it again, though we 
seem to be just upon the track of it, and the shadow hovers 
about us. Or it was like some early memory or association, 
which has visited us for a moment, and has gone away instantly 
and cannot be recalled. * * * * Prophecy thus 
under paganism never grew into a practical and directing 
power; and even the great Roman poet, captivated as he was 
by its ancient utterance, and the beauty of its promise, yet 
could do no more with it than convert it into a court compli- 
ment, and connect its romantic associations with the prospect 
of the new-born heir of the Pollios. 

But as soon as prophecy found a receptacle in the chosen 
race, it grew strong, it became an architect and builder, it 
raised institutions, it enacted ordinances. In Abraham it 
founded a family, in Moses it framed a law, in David it erected 
a kingdom. The Jewish people from the first gave prophecy 
a fixed home, and the nation became the regular and guarded 
depository of the sacred gift. The Jewish Church was the fort 
of prophecy, maintaining and keeping up the inspired expecta- 
tion, protecting it from outside blasts, and surrounding it with 
institutions and schools; so that, preserved as a directing 
influence among them, it prepared a practical reception for the 
Messiah; and founded that body of thought in the nation which 
welcomed Him who fulfilled the promise when He came, and in 
that welcome founded the Christian Church. Prophecy had 
thus the most striking practical result, and proved itself an 
instrument of real efficiency and power. — J. B. Mozley : Ruling 
Ideas in Early Ages, pp. 17-18. 

The Prophetic Spirit. — It was the distinguishing mark of the 
Jewish people that their golden age was not in the past, but in 
the future ; that their greatest hero (as they deemed Him to be) 
was not their founder, but their founder’s latest descendant. 
Their traditions, their fancies, their glories, gathered round 
the head not of a chief, or warrior, or sage that had been, but 
of a King, a Deliverer, a Prophet who was to come. Of this 


THE BIBLE. 


351 


singular expectation the Prophets were, if not the chief authors, 
at least the chief exponents. Sometimes He is named, some- 
times he is unnamed ; sometimes He is almost identified with 
some actual Prince of the coming or the present generation, 
sometimes He recedes into the distant ages. But again and 
again, at least in the later Prophetic writings, the vista is 
closed by His person, His character, His reign. And almost 
everywhere the Prophetic spirit, in the delineation of His 
coming, remains true to itself. He is to be a King, a Conqueror, 
yet not by the common weapons of earthly warfare, but by 
those only weapons which the Prophetic order recognized — by 
justice, mercy, truth and goodness — by suffering, by endurance, 
by identification of Himself with the joys, the suffering of His 
nation, by opening a wider sympathy to the whole human race 
than had ever been opened before. That this expectation, 
however explained, existed in a greater or less degree amongst 
the Prophets is not doubted by any theologians of any school 
whatever. It is no matter of controversy. It is a simple and 
universally recognized fact, that, filled with these prophetic 
images, the whole Jewish nation — nay, at last the whole Eastern 
world — did look forward with longing expectation to the 
coming of this future Conqueror. 

A Character Arises Out of It. — Was this unparalleled expectation 
realized? And here again I speak only of facts which are 
acknowledged by Germans and Frenchmen, no less than by 
Englishmen, by critics and by skeptics, even more fully than by 
theologians and ecclesiastics. There did arise out of this nation 
a character, by universal consent, as unparalleled as the expec- 
tation which had preceded Him. Jesus of Kazareth was, on the 
most superficial no less than on the deepest view we take of 
His coming, the greatest name, the most extraordinary power, 
that has ever crossed the stage of history. And this greatness 
consisted not in outward power, but precisely in those qual- 
ities in which from first to last the Prophetic order had laid 
the utmost stress— justice and love, goodness and truth. 

I push this argument no further. Its force is weakened the 
moment we introduce into it any controverted detail. The fact 
which arrests our attention is, that side by side with this great 
expectation appears the great climax to which the whole His- 
tory leads up. It is a proof, if anything can be a proof, of a 
unity of design, in the education of the Jews, in the history of 


352 


THE BIBLE. 

the world. It is a proof that the events of the Christian 
Dispensation were planted on the very center of human 
hopes and fears. It is a proof that the noblest hopes and 
aspirations that were ever breathed were not disappointed; 
and that when u God spake by the Prophets w of the coming 
Christ, He spake of that which in His own good time He was 
certain to bring to pass. — A. P. Stanley : Jewish Church , Vol. 1 , 
pp. 519-20. 

The Function of the Hebrew Prophet. — The prophetic impulse 
had been felt long before the Levitical institutes were framed. 
Now and then, at wide intervals, men of genius had arisen, 
who carried forward the moral sentiment of their age. They 
enlarged the bounds of truth, and deepened in the con- 
sciences of men moral and religious obligations. It is only 
through the imagination that rude natures can be spiritually 
influenced. These men were often great moral dramatists. 
They kept themselves aloof. Some of them dwelt in solitary 
places, and came upon the people at unexpected moments. 

The prophets were intensely patriotic. They were the defend- 
ers of the common people against oppressive rulers, and they 
stirred them up to throw off foreign rule. Wild and weird as 
they often were, awful in their severity, carrying justice at times 
to the most bloody and terrific sacrifices, they were, notwith- 
standing, essentially humane, sympathetic and good. The old 
prophets were the men in whom, in a desolate age, and in 
almost savage conditions of society, the gentler graces of the 
soul took refuge. We must not be deceived by their rugged 
exterior, nor by the battle which they made for the right. Human- 
ity has its severities ; and even love, striving for the crown, must 
fight. Like all men who reform a corrupt age, the rude violence 
of the prophets was exerted against the animal that is in man, 
for the sake of his spiritual nature. 

Had there been but the influence of the Temple or of the 
Tabernacle to repress and limit the outflow of those passions 
which make themselves channels in every society of men, they 
would have swept like a flood, and destroyed the foundations 
of civil life. It was the prophet who kept alive the moral 
sense of the people. He taught no subtleties. It was too 
early, and this was not the nation, for such philosophy as 
sprung up in Greece. The prophet seized those great moral 
truths which inhere in the very soul of man, and which natural 


THE BIBLE. 


353 


and revealed religion bold in common. Their own feelings 
were aroused by mysterious contact with the forces of the 
invisible world. They confronted alike the court and the 
nation with audacious fidelity. * * * They 

trod under foot the artificial sanctity of religious usages, and 
vindicated the authority of morality, humanity, and simple 
personal piety against the superstitions and the exactions of 
religious institutions and their officials. — Beecher ; Life of 
Christ , Vol. 1, p. 87-9. 

Mill Says the Hebrew System was Full of Progress and Civiliza- 
tion. — The Egyptian hierarchy, the paternal despotism of China, 
were very fit instruments for carrying those nations up to the 
point of civilization which they attained. But having reached 
that point they were brought to a permanent halt, for want of 
mental liberty and individuality — requisites of improvement 
which the institutions that had carried them thus far entirely 
incapacitated them from acquiring, and as the institutions did 
not break down and give place to others, further improvement 
stopped. In contrast with these nations let us consider the 
example of an opposite character, afforded by another and a 
comparatively insignificant Oriental people— the Jews. They, 
too, had an absolute monarchy and a hierarchy. These did for 
them what was done for other Oriental races by their institutions 
— subdued them to industry and order, and gave them a national 
life. But neither their kings nor their priests ever obtained, as 
in those other countries, the exclusive molding of their 
character. Their religion gave existence to an inestimably 
precious unorganized institution — the Order (if it may be so 
termed) of Prophets. Under the protection, generally, though 
not always effectual, of their sacred character, the Prophets 
were a power in the nation, often more than a match for 
kings and priests, and kept up, in that little corner of the earth, 
the antagonism of influences which is the only real security for 
continued progress. Religion consequently was not there — 
what it has been in so many other places — a consecration of all 
that was once established, and a barrier against further improve- 
ment. The remark of a distinguished Hebrew, that the Prophets 
were in Church and State the equivalent of the modern liberty 
of the press, gives a just but notan adequate conception of the 
part fulfilled in national and universal history by this great 
element of Jewish life ; by means of which the canon of inspira- 


354 


THE BIBLE. 


tion never being complete, the persons most eminent in genius 
and moral feeling could not only denounce and reprobate, with 
the direct authority of the Almighty, whatever appeared to 
them deserving of such treatment, but could give forth better 
and higher interpretations of the national religion, which 
thenceforth became part of the religion. Accordingly whoever 
can divest himself of the habit of reading the Bible as if it was 
one book, which until lately was equally inveterate in Christians 
and unbelievers, sees with admiration the vast interval between 
the morality and religion of the Pentateuch, or even of the 
historical books, and the morality and religion of the Prophe- 
cies, a distance as wide as between these last and the Gospels. 
Conditions more favorable to progress could not easily exist; 
accordingly the Jews, instead of being stationary, like other 
Asiatics, were, next to the Greeks, the most progressive people 
of antiquity, and, jointly with them, have been the starting- 
point and main propelling agency of modern cultivation . — John 
Stuart Mill : Representative Government , pp. 41-2. 

Volney and the Scriptures Compared.— Header, you claim the 
right to judge for yourself, and you are entreated to use that 
right in examining the evidences of the truth of the Scriptures. 
It may be that you have heard the opinions of believers rid- 
iculed, and their arguments treated with scorn beause they 
were not deemed impartial witnesses on this subject. Should 
such have been the case, we here bring before your view sub- 
stantial facts, asserted by a professed infidel, and, therefore, not 
liable to the objections which are raised against Christian 
writers. The facts to which your attention will be called are 
indisputable, and most of the particulars to which they relate 
have been verified by the personal examination of the most 
recent travelers, and may now be scrutinized by any one who 
chooses to visit Syria. 

The object is to adduce facts which prove the divine 
inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, from the writings of 
Volney, the author of The Ruins of Empires and Travels in 
Syria , a most determined infidel. Not only does he attest 
facts which constitute the literal fulfillment of numerous 
prophecies, but he describes the peculiar and characteristic 
features of the desolations foretold by them, with as much 
detail and precision as if he had copied the prophetic denunci- 
ations rather than related his own observations; or as if he 


THE BIBLE. 


355 


had aimed to prove that they had been fulfilled to the very 
letter. Nor can any authority be adduced superior to Yolney 
as a correct and faithful describer of the countries which he 
visited ; and his descriptions are as minute as the testimony on 
the subject is unexceptionable. “ It has been reserved for the 
genius of Yolney/ 7 says Malte Brun, “ so to combine the 
detached accounts of other travelers, antiquaries and natural- 
ists with the results of his own observation and study, as to 
offer to the world a complete description of Syria. 77 

The present state of Judseaand its inhabitants, and of adja- 
cent countries, has been foretold by various prophecies, of the 
exact accomplishment of which we may have at one view the 
most satisfactory proof, by placing them without note or 


comment, beside the assertioi 
tianity. 

PROPHECIES OF JUDAEA AND 
THE ADJOINING COUNTRIES. 

“Then shall the land enjoy 
her sabbaths, as long as itlieth 
desolate, and ye be in your 
enemies 7 land ; even then shall 
the land rest and enjoy her 
sabbaths. As long as it lieth 
desolate, it shall rest. 77 (Lev. 
xxvi : 34, 35.) 


“Your land strangers devour 
it in your presence, and it is 
desolate, as overthrown by 
strangers. 77 (Isaiah i : 7.) 

“ Destruction upon destruc- 
tion is cried; for the whole 
land is spoiled. 77 (Jer. iv : 20.) 
“And I will give it into the 
hands of the strangers for a 
prey, and to the wicked of the 


of a decided enemy to Chris- 

EXTRACTS FROM VOLNEY. 

“ Every day as I proceeded 
on my journey, I found fields 
lying waste . 77 — The Ruins, c. i. 

“ Why are these lands stript 
of their former blessings 
(numerous flocks, fertile fields, 
and abundant harvests) ? Why 
have they been banished, as it 
were, and transferred for so 
many ages to other nations 
and different climes? 77 — Ih., c. 
ii. 

“ During the last 2,500 years, 
ten invasions may be enume- 
rated, which have successively 
introduced different foreign 
nations . 77 — Travels in Syria, c. 
xxii. 

“ In the year 622 (636) the 
Arabian tribes, collected under 
the banners of Mohammed, 
seized, or rather laid it waste. 
Since that period, torn to 
pieces by the civil wars of the 


356 


THE BIBLE. 


earth for a spoil; and they 
shall pollute it.” (Ezek. vii: 
21.) “ Wherefore I will bring 
the worst of the heathen, and 
they shall possess their 
houses.” (Ezek. vii : 24.) “Mis- 
chief shall come upon mis- 
chief.” (Ezek. vii : 26.) “Jeru- 
salem shall be trodden down 
of the Gentiles, until the times 
of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” 
(Luke xxi : 24.) 

“Your highways shall be 
desolate.” (Lev. xxvi : 22.) 


“The highways lie waste, 
the wayfaring man ceaseth.” 
(Isaiah xxxiii : 8.) 


“The spoilers are come upon 
all high places through the 
wilderness.” (Jer. xii : 12.) 


“Thus saith the Lord God 


Eatimites and the Ommiades, 
wrested from the Caliphs by 
their rebellious governors, 
taken from them by the 
Turcoman soldiery, invaded 
by the European crusaders, 
retaken by the Mamelukes 
of Egypt, and ravaged by 
Tamerlane and his Tartars, 
it has at length fallen into the 
hands of the Ottoman Turks.” 
—Ib., p. 352. 

“ In the interior parts of the 
country there are neither great 
roads, nor canals, nor even 
bridges, etc. The roads in the 
mountains are extremely bad. 
It is remarkable that through- 
out Syria, neither a wagon nor 
a cart is to be seen.” — J5., c. 
xxxviii. 

“There is no establishment 
either of post or of public con- 
veyance. No one dares travel 
alone, by reason of continual 
danger. It is necessary for 
travelers to wait till several 
are going to the same place ; or 
to take the opportunity of 
joining the suite of some great 
man, who may act as protector, 
or, as is more frequently the 
case, oppressor, to the whole 
caravan.” — lb. 

“These precautions are par- 
ticularly necessary in those 
parts of the country which lie 
open to the Arabs, such as 
Palestine, and the whole fron- 
tier of the desert.” — lb. 

“The merchants live in a 


THE BIBLE. 


357 


of the inhabitants of Jerusa- 
lem, and of the land of Israel : 
They shall eat their bread with 
carefulness, and drink their 
water with astonishment, that 
her land may be desolate from 
all that is therein, because of 
the violence of all them that 
dwell therein.” (Ezek. xii : 19.) 


“The earth is defiled under 
the inhabitants thereof.” (Isa. 
xxiv: 5.) 

“The mirth of tabrets 
ceaseth; the joy of the harp 
cease th.” (Isaiah xxiv : 8.) 

“All the merry-hearted do 
sigh.” (Isaiah xxiv : 7.) 


“They shall not drink wine 
with a song.” (Isaiah xxiv : 9.) 


“The noise of them that re- 
joice endeth. All joy is dark- 
ened ; the mirth of the land is 
gone.” (Isaiah xxiv : 8, 11.) 


state of continual alarm, etc. 
The same dread prevails in the 
villages, every peasant fearing 
equally to excite the envy of 
his fellows, or the avarice of 
the Aga and his soldiery.” — 
lb. 

“ The condition of the peas- 
antry is wretched. Their sole 
subsistence is a little coarse 
barley bread, with onions or 
lentils ; and water their only 
beverage. Agriculture is in 
the most deplorable state, no 
more grain being sown than is 
absolutely necessary for bare 
sustenance.” — lb., c. xxxvii 
and xxxviii. 

“ Corruption is habitual and 
universal.” — Ib.j c. xxxiv. 

“They have no music but 
vocal ; for they neither know 
nor esteem that which is in- 
strumental.” — lb ., c. xxxix. 

“ Their singing is accom- 
panied with sighs, etc. They 
may be said to excel most in 
the melancholy strain.” — lb. 

“ Good cheer would expose 
them to extortion, and wine to 
a corporal punishment.” — lb ., 
c. xl. 

“In whatever they say or do, 
they maintain the same grave 
and phlegmatic air. Instead of 
the frank and lively manner 
which so universally prevails 
among us, their behavior is 
serious, austere and melan- 
choly. They rarely laugh ; and 
the gayety of the French ap- 


358 


THE BIBLE. 


“They that dwell therein are 
desolate.” (Isaiah xxiv : 6.) 


“I will bring the land into 
desolation ; and yonr enemies 
which dwell therein, shall be 
astonished at it.”’ (Lev. xxvi: 
32.) 

“Every one that passeth 
thereby shall be astonished.” 
(Jer. xviii: 16.) 

“Your cities are burned with 
fire.” (Isaiah i: 7.) 


“The forts and towers shall 
be for dens forever.” (Isaiah 
xxxii: 14.) 

“The defenced city shall be 
desolate, and the habitation for- 
saken, and left like a wilder- 
ness.” (Isaiah xxvii: 10.) 

“When the boughs thereof 
are withered, they shall be 
broken off ; the women come, 
and set them on fire.” (Isaiah 
xxvii : 11.) 


pears to them a fit of delirium.” 

—Ib. 

“ The government of the 
Turks in Syria is a mere mili- 
tary despotism ; that is, the bulk 
of the inhabitants are subject 
to the will of a faction of armed 
men who dispose of everything 
according to their own inter- 
est and pleasure.” — lb ., c. 
xxxiii. 

“So feeble a population in so 
excellent a country may well 
excite our astonishment; but 
this will be increased if we com- 
pare the present number of 
inhabitants with that of ancient 
times.” — Ib.j c. xxxii. 

“The appearance of the vil- 
lage of Loudd, formerly Lydda 
and Diospolis,is precisely that 
of a place which has been re- 
cently ravaged by the enemy 
and by fire. Arimathea is al- 
most as completely in ruins as 
Loudd itself.” — lb c. xxxi. 

“At every turn are found 
ruins of towers, turrets and 
moated castles, left as a dwell- 
ing for owls and scorpions.” — 
lb. 


“Beyond (Jaffa) the country 
was once full of large olive- 
trees ; but the Mamelukes hav- 
ing cut them all down, either 
for the pleasure of cutting, or 
to use as firewood, Jaffa has 
lost the benefit of them. 


THE BIBLE. 


359 


“It is a people of no under- 
standing.” (Isaiah xxvii : 11.) 


“Many pastors have destroy- 
ed my vineyard; they have 
trodden my portion under 
foot.” (Jer. xii : 10.) 


“They have made my pleas- 
ant portion a desolate wilder- 
ness.” Jer. xii : 10.) 


“The whole land shall be 
desolate. Yet will I not make 
a full end.” (Jer. iv: 27.) In 
that day it shall come to pass, 
that the glory of Jacob shall 
be made thin. When thus it 


“The country around (Arima- 
thea) has been planted with 
olive trees ; but they are per- 
ishing through the mischief 
done to them by the people, 
either openly or secretly.” — 
lb. 

“A people among whom the 
simplest arts are in a state of 
barbarism ; and the sciences 
quite unknown. The barbar- 
ism of Syria is complete.” — lb., 
c. xxxix. 

“It may be said that the 
means of instruction do not 
exist among them.” — lb. 

“The Turcomans, Kourds, 
and Bedouins have no fixed 
abode, but wander about with 
their tents and flocks, etc. 
The Arabs encamp everywhere 
upon that part of the frontier of 
Syria which borders upon their 
deserts ; and even upon the 
plains in the interior, as those 
of Palestine, Bequaa, and Gali- 
lee.” — Ib.y c. xxii. 

“The pastoral or wandering 
tribes of Syria .” — Title of c. 
xxiii. 

“I have visited the places 
that were the theatre of so 
much splendor, and have be- 
held nothing but solitude and 
desertion .” — The Ruins , c. ii. 

“Nothing is to be seen but 
solitude and sterility.” — lb. 

“I looked for those ancient 
people and their works, and all 
I could find was a faint trace, 
like that left in the sand by the 


360 


THE BIBLE. 


shall be in the midst of the 
land among the people, there 
shall be as the shaking of an 
olive-tree, and as the gleaning 
grapes when the vintage is 
done.” (Isaiah xvii : 4 ; xxiv : 
13.) 

“They have sown wheat, but 
shall reap thorns ; they have 
put themselves to pain, but 
shall not profit.” (Jer. xii: 13.) 

“No flesh shall have peace.” 
(Jer. xii: 12.) 

“Upon the land of my people 
shall come up thorns and 
briars.” (Isaiah xxxii : 13. 

“I will destroy your high 
places, and cut down your im- 
ages. I will bring your sanctu- 
aries unto desolation.” Lev. 
xxvi: 30, 31.) 

“The palaces shall be for- 
saken.” (Isaiah xxxii : 14.) 

“I will destroy the remnant 
of the sea-coast. (Ezek. xxv : 

16 .) 

“I will make your cities 
waste.” (Lev. xxvi : 31.) 

“I beheld, and all the cities 
thereof were broken down.” 
(Jer. iv: 26.) “Ev^rycity shall 
be forsaken, and not a man 
dwell therein.” (Jer. iv : 29.) 

“ The inhabitants of the earth 
are burned, and few men left.” 
(Isaiah xxiv : 6.) 


foot of the passenger.” — lb. 


“Man sows in anguish, and 
reaps nothing but vexation and 
cares.” — lb. 

“War, famine, and pestilence 
assail him in turn.” — lb. 

“The earth produces only 
briars and wormwood.” — lb. 

“The temples are thrown 
down.” — lb . 


“The palaces are demolish- 
ed.”— 16. 

“The ports are filled up.” — 
lb. 

“The towns are destroyed, 
and the earth stript of inhabit- 
ants. — lb . 


“The territories of Yamnia 
and Yoppa, in Palestine alone, 
says the philosophical geog- 
rapher Strabo, were formerly 
so populous that they could 
bring forty thousand armed 
men into the field. At present 
they could scarcely furnish 


THE BIBLE. 


361 


“The cities that are inhab- 
ited shall be laid waste.” (Ezek. 
xii: 20.) 

“ But yet in it shall be a tenth, 
and it shall return, and shall be 
eaten ; as a teil-tree, and as an 
oak, whose substance is in 
them when they cast their 
leaves.” (Isaiah vi : 13.) 

“ I will give it into the hands 
of the strangers for a prey, and 
to the wicked of the earth for a 
spoil. The robbers shall enter 
into it, and defile it.” (Ezek. 
vii: 21, 22.) 


‘‘How long shall the land 
mourn, and the herbs of every 
field wither, for the wicked- 
ness of them that dwell there- 
in? (Jer. xii: 4.) 


“And the stranger that shall 
come from a far land, when 
they see the plagues of that 
land, and the sickness which 
the Lord hath laid upon it — 
even all nations shall say: 


three thousand .” — Travels in 
Syria , c. xxxii. 

“ Every day I met with de- 
serted villages .”— The Ruins, 
c. i. 

“The plain country is rich 
and light, calculated for the 
greatest fertility .” — Travels in 
Syria, c. i., s. 6. 


“ When the Ottomans wrest- 
ed Syria from the Mamelukes, 
they only considered it as the 
spoil of a vanquished enemy,” 
etc. — lb., c. xxxiii., s. 1. “As 
the porte never restores any- 
thing to a nation which it has 
pillaged, it evidently does not 
disapprove of robbery which is 
profitable to itself.” — lb. 

“ Like most hot countries, it 
is destitute of that fresh and 
living verdure which almost 
constantly adorns our own 
lands, and of the grassy and 
flowery carpet which covers 
the meadows of Normandy 
and Flanders. The earth in 
Syria always looks dusty. Yet, 
probably, the country would 
have been shaded by forests, 
had it not been laid waste by 
the hand of man.” — lb., c. 
xxxii., s. 1. 

“ From whence proceed such 
melancholy revolutions? For 
what cause is the fortune of 
these countries so strikingly 
changed? Why are so many 
cities destroyed? Why is not 


362 


THE BIBLE. 


4 Wherefore hath the Lord 
done this unto this land ? What 
meaneth the heat of this great 
anger ? 7 77 (D eut. xxix : 22, 24.) 

“The anger of the Lord was 
kindled against this land, to 
bring upon it all the curses that 
are written in this book. 77 
(Deut. xxix : 27.) 

“The earth also is defiled un- 
der the inhabitants thereof, be- 
cause they have transgressed 
the laws, changed the ordi- 
nance, broken the everlasting 
covenant. 77 (Isaiah xxiv : 5.) 

“I will not turn away the 
punishment of Gaza. 77 (Amos 
i : 6.) “Gaza shall be forsaken. 77 
(Zeph. ii : 4.) “Baldness is come 
upon Gaza. 77 (Jer. xlvii: 5.) 


“Ashkelonis cut off with the 
remnant of their valley. 77 (Jer. 
xlvii: 5.) 

“Ashkelon shall be a desola- 
tion. 77 (Zeph. ii : 4.) 

“Ashkelon shall not be in- 
habited. 77 (Zech. ix : 5.) 

“I will cut off the inhabitant 
from Ashdod. 77 (Amos i : 8.) 

“The remnant of the Philis- 
tines shall perish. 77 (Amos i: 8.) 

“The kingdom shall cease 
from Damascus, and the rem- 
nant of Syria. 77 (Isaiah xvii : 3.) 

“They shall call the nobles 
thereof to the kingdom (in Idu- 
maea), but none shall be there, 
and all her princes shall be 


that ancient population repro- 
duced and perpetuated f Why 
are these regions deprived of 
the blessings they formerly en- 
joyed ? 77 — The Ruins, c. ii. 

“A mysterious God exer- 
cises his incomprehensible 
judgments ! He has doubtless 
pronounced a secret maledic- 
tion against this land. In 
what consists that anathema 
of Heaven ? Where is the di- 
vine curse which perpetuates 
the desolation of these coun- 
tries ! 77 — lb. 

“The white marble ruins 
which are still remaining at 
Gaza, show that it has been at 
some former time the abode of 
wealth and luxury. At pres- 
ent, it is a small unfortified 
town. 77 — Ib., c. xxxi. 

“ The waste ruins Askelon. 77 
— Ib. 

“ Several ruins are met with 
in succession, the most con- 
siderable of which is Ezdoud, 
at the present time noted only 
for scorpions. 77 — Ib. 

“All the rest of the country 
is a desert. 77 — Ib. 

“ I enumerated the kingdoms 
of Damascus and Idumaea, of 
Jerusalem and Samaria, of the 
warlike states of the Philis- 
tines, and the commercial re- 
publics of Phoenicia. This 
Syria, said I to myself, which 


THE BIBLE. 


363 


nothing.” (Isaiah xxxiv : 12.) 
“I will cause to cease the king- 
dom of the house of Israel.” 
(Hosea i: 4.) 

“As for Samaria, her king is 
cut off as the foam upon the 
water.” (Hosea x: 7.) “Samaria 
shall become desolate.” (Hosea 
xiii : 16.) 

“I will cut off the pride of 
the Philistines.” (Zech. ix : 6.) 


“None shall pass through it 
(Idumaea) forever and ever.” 
(Isaiah xxxiv : 10.) 

“From generation to genera- 
tion it shall lie waste.” (Isaiah 
xxxiv : 10.) “All the cities there- 
of shall be perpetual wastes.” 
(Jer. xlix: 13.) “Edom shall 
be a desolation; every one 
that goeth by it shall be aston- 
ished. No man shall abide 
there, saith the Lord, neither 
shall a son of man dwell in it.” 
(Jer. xlix: 17,18.) “I will lay 
thy cities waste, and thou shalt 
be desolate and thou shalt 
know that I am the Lord.” 
(Ezek. xxxv : 4.) 

“Thorns shall come up in her 
palaces, nettles and brambles 
in the fortresses thereof ; and 
it shall be for an habitation of 
dragons and a court for owls.” 
(Isaiah xxxiv : 13.) 


is now almost depopulated, 
then contained a hundred 
flourishing cities, and abound- 
ed with towns, villages, and 
hamlets. Everywhere might 
have been seen cultivated 
fields, frequented roads and 
crowded habitations. Ah ! 
what is become of those ages 
of abundance and of life? 
What is become of so many 
splendid productions of the 
hand of man ?” — The Ruins, c. ii. 

“This country (Idumaea) has 
never been visited by any 
traveler, though it richly de- 
serves it .” — Travels in Syria , 
c. xxxi. 

“From the report of the 
Arabs of Bakir, and the inhab- 
itants of Gaza, who fre- 
quently go to Maan and 
Karak, on the road of 
the pilgrims, there are to the 
southeast of the Lake Asphal- 
tites (Dead Sea), within three 
days 7 journey, upward of thirty 
ruined towns, absolutely de- 
serted. This was the country 
of the Idumseans, who, at the 
time of the destruction of 
Jerusalem, were almost as 
numerous as the Jews. 77 — lb . 

“In several of them are found 
large colonnaded buildings, 
which may have been ancient 
temples, or, at least, Greek 
churches. The Arabs some- 
times fold their flocks in them, 
but generally avoid them, 
on account of the enormous 


364 


THE BIBLE. 


“Thy riches and thy fairs (O 
Tyrus), thy merchandise, thy 
mariners, and thy pilots, thy 
calkers, and the occupiers of 
thy merchandise, and all thy 
men of war, that are in thee, 
and in all thy company which 
is in the midst of thee, shall fall 
into the midst of the seas in 
the day of thy ruin.” (Ezek. 
xxvii : 27.) 

“I will make her (Tyre) like 
the top of a rock. It shall be 
a place for the spreading of 
nets in the midst of the sea.” 
(Ezek. xxvi : 4, 5.) 


“Lebanon is ashamed and 
hewn down.” Isaiah xxxiii : 9.) 
“The cedar is fallen ; the de- 
fensed forest (marg.) is come 
down.” (Zech. xi : 2.) 

“The rest of the trees of his 
forest shall be few, that a child 
may write them.” (Isaiah x : 
19.) 

“I will sell the land (Egypt) 
into the hand of the wicked : 
and I will make the land waste, 
and all that is therein, by the 
hand of strangers ; I the Lord 
have spoken it.” (Ezek. xxx : 
12 .) 


“She (Ninevah) is empty, and 


scorpions with which they 
abound.” — lb, 

“Where are those fleets of 
Tyre, those dockyards of Arad, 
those workshops of Sidon, and 
that multitude of mariners, pi- 
lots, merchants, and soldiers ? 
Where are those laborers, 
those dwellings, those flocks, 
and that picture of animated 
nature of which the earth 
seemed proud ?” — The Ruinsi 
c. ii. 

“The whole population of the 
village (Tyre) consists of fifty 
or sixty poor families, who live 
obscurely on the produce of 
their little ground, and a tri- 
fling fishery .” — Travels in Sy- 
ria , , c. xxix. 

“Among the rocks appear re- 
mains of the so much boasted 
cedars, which, however, are 
anything but majestic.” — JZ>., c. 
xx., s. 2. 

“There are not more than 
four or five trees of any size.” 
— Ib ., note, 

“Such is the state of Egypt. 
Deprived twenty-three centu- 
ries ago of her natural proprie- 
tors, she has been successively 
a prey to the Persians, the 
Macedoniaps, the Romans, the 
Greeks, the Arabs, the Georgi- 
ans, and, at length to the race 
of Tartars distinguished by the 
name of Ottoman Turks.” — 
Travels , c. vi. 

“Where are those ramparts 


THE BIBLE. 


365 


of Nineveh V 9 — The Ruins , c. ii. 
“Of Nineveh, of which scarcely 
the name is left.” — Ih ., c. iv. 

“Where are those walls of 
Babylon V 9 — Ih ., c. ii. 

“Nothing is left of Babylon 
but heaps of earth, trodden un- 
der foot of men.” — Ih ., c. iv. 


void, and waste.” (Nah. ii : 10.) 

“Their place is not known 
where they are.” (Nah. iii : 17.) 

“The broad walls of Babylon 
shall be utterly broken.” (Jer. 

Ii : 58.) 

“Cast her (Babylon) up as 
heaps, and destroy her utterly : 
let nothing of her be left.” (Jer. 

1 : 26.) 

“ O ye solitary ruins ! ye silent walls !” exclaims Yolney, “ how 
many useful lessons, how many affecting and striking reflec- 
tions do ye offer to the mind which is capable of considering 
you aright !” — The Ruins , c. iii. 

It is true that these ruins do afford most important lessons, 
and especially as to the truth of prophecy. Never was a man 
more completely vindicated from the charges of his enemies 
and calumniators, than is the truth of the Bible by the writings 
of the writer who has dared to call in question its divine 
authority. That very man, whose senses were spell-bound in 
the thickest darkness of error, has, however undesignedly, 
struck a blow powerful enough not only to shake, but to over- 
turn, the erroneous opinions of any individual who will 
calmly interrogate these ruins, and listen to the voice of their 
reply. 

It is true, as Yolney affirms, that they are not the effect of 
chance. Chance is but an empty name invented for the purpose 
of hiding ignorance and sheltering sloth ; not a power capable 
of overthrowing cities, and changing kingdoms into mighty 
deserts. The destruction of empires demonstrates the wicked- 
ness of the men by whom their ruin has been affected and 
perpetuated. Everywhere, without exception, the Scriptures 
point out in these ruins the punishment of sin, and thereby 
make manifest the moral government of God, and show the 
untiring vigilance with which His providence enters into the 
minutest details of human events. Considered in their true 
light, as the express and literal fulfillment of numerous prophe- 
cies, they prove, beyond all doubt, the divine inspiration of the 
Scriptures. We must be deaf to reason, and blind worshipers 
of the idol chance, if, for the sake of listening to the declamations 
of a lying philosophy, we refuse to hear that spirit of prophecy 


366 


THE BIBLE. 


which is the testimony of Jesus, while it proclaims: '“Verily, 
there is a God that judgeth in the earth.” We here invite you, 
therefore, to behold the fulfillment of what the Lord has fore- 
told, and to be convinced of the undeniable fact that the Bible 
is the word of God, who, having from the beginning determined 
the end, has caused it to be written in His book, that all men 
may know that He alone is God. 

If you will calmly and carefully examine the prophecies of 
Scripture, as here confronted with the testimony of Volney, 
you will be compelled to submit to such satisfactory evidence. 
Volney, however, is but one among a multitude of witnesses, 
and the prophecies here cited form but a small part of those 
contained in the Bible. The judgments of God, as written in 
that book, are repeated by thousands of ruins as by so many 
echoes. The sins of mankind are all known unto the Lord ; the 
guilty shall find no favor in His sight, and none that riseth up 
against Him shall prosper. The anger of nations is the rod of 
His displeasure. The convulsions of kingdoms and empires 
prove the infallible certainty of “the word of God which 
abideth forever;” and as the most potent among them are 
successively laid in the dust, a voice from amidst their ruins is 
heard proclaiming: “One jot or one tittle shaft in no wise pass 
from the law, till all be fulfilled.” (Matt, v : 18.) “ Come, 

behold the works of the Lord, what desolations He hath made 
in the earth. Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm xlvi: 
8, 10.) “ Come and see the works of God. He is terrible in 
His doing toward the children of men. He ruleth by His 
power forever ; His eyes behold the nations ; let not the rebel- 
lious exalt themselves.” (Psalm lxvi: 5, 7.) “Sin is the ruin of 
nations.” — T. Holman’s Tracts: New York. 

Prophecy Concerning Messiah. — Rabbi Alshech, who flourished 
in Palestine in the middle of the sixteenth century, makes a 
similar confession — “Behold our Rabbis have with one mouth 
confirmed, and received by tradition that King Messiah is here 
spoken of. (Isaiah, chapter 53.) * * * He beareth the 

iniquities of the children of Israel, and behold His reward is 
with Him.” The truth of these confessions may be seen by 
consulting the ancient books of authority. In Isaiah xlii : 1, and 
lii: 13, Jonathan, about the time of our Lord, adds Messiah 
after the word “ servant ;” “ Behold, my servant, the Messiah.” 
The book of Zohar, regarded with the utmost reverence by all 


THE BIBLE. 


367 


pious Jews, and parts of which are certainly from the first 
century of Christianity, also says plainly that Messiah bears 
the sins of the people, and that “ If he had not removed them 
from Israel and taken them upon himself, no man could bear 
the chastisement of Israel on account of the punishment 
pronounced in the Law.” This is what is written — Surely He 
hath borne our sicknesses. The Talmud (Sanhedrin, Vol. 98, 
Col. 2), the Psikta, and Yalkut Shimoni, all have the same 
interpretation. “ Behold my servant shall deal very prudently 
— this is the King Messiah. He shall be exalted, and extolled, 
and be very high. He shall be exalted more than Abraham. 
* * * He shall be extolled more than Moses. * * * 

He shall be higher than the ministering angels. 4 But He was 
wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our 
iniquities : the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and 
with His stripes we are healed.’ Rabbi Huna, in the name of 
Rabbi Acha, says, the chastisements were divided into three 
parts — one to David and the fathers ; one to the rebellious 
generation ; and one to King Messiah.” Indeed, such posses- 
sion had this interpretation of the Jewish mind, that it found 
its way into the prayers of the Synagogue, and there it remains 
until this day. 

That this national persuasion ought to have some weight, 
even if not supported by the Kew Testament, will be admitted 
by candid readers. It acquires double weight from the fact 
that this interpretation is contrary to the worldly hopes of a 
conquering Messiah, so ardently entertained in the days of 
Roman domination in Palestine, and to which Rabbinic polem- 
ics still return in order to prove that Jesus cannot be the 
Messiah. With such hopes and prejudices, the idea of a suf- 
fering and despised Messiah could never have arisen, nor 
have been entertained, if it had not previously existed, and 
been received as true and genuine. The idea of pardon and 
salvation through the sufferings of another was equally con- 
trary to the self-righteous doctrine of the Pharisees. The exist- 
ence and continuance of such an interpretation is, therefore, 
strong proof of its antiquity, and of its original source. The 
national interpretation of one of their own records, under such 
considerations, ought to have at least as much weight as the 
discordant and controverted opinions of critics living, accord- 
ing to their own showing, 2,300 years after the record was 


368 


THE BIBLE. 


written, and filled with antecedent prejudices against a true 
exegesis. 

He must, indeed, be a man “that leans to his own understand- 
ing, who can lightly esteem the judgment of the ancient Jew- 
ish Church, and the common consent of all Christian scholars 
for nearly 1800 years,* and believe that he has found what 
such a goodly company have failed to perceive. But the Chris- 
tian bows to still higher authority than the common judgment 
of this mighty host of the great, the good, the wise, and the 
learned, in so many ages and nations ; he learns from Him 
whose Spirit spake in the Prophets, and guided His disciples 
and Apostles into all truth. Christ and His Apostles have 
interpreted this chapter of His sufferings, death, and resurrec- 
tion-glory ; and the providence of God has verified the inter- 
pretation. Not to speak of the past, our eyes still see the ful- 
fillment of this prediction. The most improbable prophecy in 
the world was this which predicted that a Jew, despised by 
his people, numbered amongst transgressors, cut off out of the 
land of the living, should, nevertheless, prolong his days, be 
the light of the Gentiles, and God’s salvation to the ends of 
the earth. And yet this is what has been accomplished, and is 
accomplishing itself before our eyes. In spite of all the pride, 
prejudice, and power of Greeks and Romans, the ignorance and 
fury of barbarian invaders, the self-sufficiency of human 
knowledge, the vices of civilization, Jesus of Nazareth has 
triumphed, and triumphs, and is still the light of the world. 
The Christian humbly and thankfully accepts the teaching of 
the Lord, and the testimony of God’s providence. The won- 
drous outline stands vividly marked on the page of prophecy ; 
the fulfillment as unmistakably inscribed on the prominent 
pages of the world’s history. The one answers to the other, as 
the mirror to the human face, and he cannot be mistaken. No 
microscopic investigations of criticism can make the agreement 
doubtful. He does not despise or disregard the labors of 
even hostile critics. On the contrary, he carefully considers 
their every suggestion, thankfully receives the light which 
they have thrown on words and phrases, acknowledges their 
diligence, their genius, their learning, and their honesty so far 
as their dogmatic prejudices allow them to be impartial. But 

* The one exception of Grotius makes the universal agreement the 
more striking. 


THE BIBLE. 


369 


Christ has spoken, and by Christ’s words he abides. He, 
therefore, believes that the prophets spake as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost; that they uttered predictions; 
that many of the most seemingly improbable have been ful- 
filled, and are pledges that the remainder shall also be accom- 
plished. He cannot join in the unbelieving cry, “ Where is the 
promise of His coming?” He does not believe that “ since 
the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the 
beginning of the creation,” but that Christ “in His majesty rides 
prosperously on in the cause of truth, and meekness, and 
righteousness;” and “though the vision tarry,” he waits for 
it, assured that it is “ for an appointed time,” and that “ at the 
end it shall speak and not lie — it will surely come, it will not 
tarry.” — McCaul : Aids to Faith , pp. 149, 154. 

Daniel’s Messianic Utterances Examined.— Dr. Kuenen con- 
fesses* that all which the book of Daniel contains respecting 
“Alexander the Great and his successors,” and especially “the 
fortunes of Antiochus Epiphanes, and that prince’s measures 
against the Israelitish religion,” is strictly accurate. But, then, 
he alleges that the account of the latest years of Antiochus 
and all beyond that time is contradicted by the event; and its 
account of matters “before Alexander the Great is not only 
incomplete, but defective, and partly inaccurate.” Hence, he 
infers that this book cannot have been the genuine production 
of the prophet Daniel, but must belong to a much later date. 
“The writer’s ignorance of these facts is at once explained, if we 
assume that he wrote in the age of Epiphanes, and that in the 
year 165 B. 0. But how can that ignorance be made to agree 
with the supposition that he was enlightened by supernatural 
revelation with regard to all the preceding matters ? Did that 
revelation begin to fail him at a certain point?” But how, if no 
such ignorance exists, except in Dr. Kuenen’s imagination, or 
must we even say it, his misrepresentation ? How, still further, 
if the book contains clear and unambiguous prophecies, which 
have been undeniably fulfilled, reaching far beyond the date 
when he himself alleges it to have been written? His argu- 

*“The Prophets and Prophecy in Israel.” An Historical and 
Critical Enquiry, by Dr. A. Kuenen, Professor of Theology in the 
University of Leyden ; London, 1877, 8 vo. [This book is written from 
the standpoint of the most ultra criticism and of absolute anti- 
supernaturalism. — Ed.~\ 
x 


370 


THE BIBLE. 


ment against its genuineness and its inspiration then falls of 
itself ; and the admission which he has made of its correctness 
in relation to events long after Daniel’s time becomes a con- 
fession of a long series of predictions accurately accomplished. 

This is not difficult to show. The charge (p. 144, note 7) that, 
whereas Antiochus died in Persia, it is predicted (Dan. xi : 40, 
45) that he should find his end in Palestine, is refuted by simply 
reading ver. 45, “And he shall come to his end, and none shall 
help him ; ” this was to be after he had planted “the tabernacle of 
his palace in the glorious holy mountain,” but that it should be 
immediately after or in the same locality is neither said nor 
implied. An error is pretended in the 2,300 days (viii : 14), and 
in three-and-a-half years (xii : 7), the 1,290 and the 1,335 days 
(vs. 11, 12) ; but their literal exactness is defended not only by 
believing interpreters as Havernick, but even by others who, 
like Bertholdt and Lengerke, attach no more credit to the 
prophecy than Dr. Kuenen himself. The statement that the 
writer of Daniel “knows only of four Persian kings” has no 
other foundation than the circumstance that he has occasion to 
speak of Xerxes (xi : 2) as the fourth after Cyrus (x : 1). 

The assertion that “he is in error even with regard to the 
Babylonian kings, of whom the last is according to him Bel- 
shazzar, the son and, as it appears, the successor of Xebuchad- 
nezzar,” is a very extraordinary one in the present state of our 
knowledge on this subject. Until a comparatively recent time 
Belshazzar was a puzzle, and the charge that the author of the 
book of Daniel had blundered here was freely made. Xo other 
writer of antiquity makes mention of such a prince. All who 
speak of the last king of Babylon call him Xabonned, or by 
some name so nearly approaching this in form as to be plainly 
identical. According to Berosus, he was not of royal descent, 
but reached the throne by a successful conspiracy ; and, instead 
of being put to death when Babylon was taken (Dan. v : 30), he 
was at that time at Borsippa, which he surrendered without a 
siege, and was in consequence generously treated by Cyrus, 
who made him Governor of Caramania, where he died. Xeno- 
phon, indeed, says that the king, whom he styles “impious,” 
but does not give his name, was slain in the capture of Babylon. 
But it was the fashion to discredit Xenophon and Daniel, and 
to affirm that the native historian Berosus must be right. Thus 
the case stood until a few years since, when the whole matter 


THE BIBLE. 


371 


was cleared up and Daniel thoroughly vindicated by the dis- 
covery of a cylinder* of Nabonned, King of Babylon, in which 
he makes repeated mention of his eldest son Belshazzar (Bel-sar- 
ussur). No doubt Nabonned had associated his son Belshazzar 
with himself in the sovereignty. When Nabonned was defeat- 
ed by Cyrus, and obliged to shut himself up in Borsippa, Bel- 
shazzar remained in Babylon and perished in the overthrow of 
the city. If we suppose Nabonned to have been married to a 
daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, f who would then be the queen of 
Dan. v: 10, Nebuchadnezzar could with as much propriety be 
called the father of Belshazzar (Dan. v.: 2 ff.) as David is called 
the father of King Josiah (2 Chron. xxxiv : 2, 3). If now, as Dr. 
Kuenen would have us believe, the book of Daniel is the pro- 
duction, not of a contemporary and eye-witness, but of some 
nameless Jew of Palestine nearly four centuries after the fall of 
Babylon, how comes it to pass that it alone of all ancient writ- 
ings has preserved the name of Belshazzar and the memory of 
his existence? 

Order of Medo-Persian and Babylonian Empires. — Another equally 
unfortunate thrust at the credibility of Daniel is the charge 
that he “thrusts in the Median monarchy between the Babylon- 
ian and the Persian.” His mention of the brief rule of Darius 
the Mede, which is also certified by Xenophon, and has besides 
such intrinsic probability under the circumstances, is another 
instance of minute accuracy where other historians of the period 
have passed over in silence a reign attended by no lasting 
consequences and eclipsed by the greater glory of that of 
Cyrus. The idea of a “Median monarchy/ 7 however, following 
the Babylonian and distinct from the Persian, is not sanctioned 
by Daniel, but foisted upon him by Dr. Kuenen for a purpose of 
his own. In order to bring the contents of the dream of Nebu- 
chadnezzar (Dan. ii) and of the vision of the four beasts (chap, 
vii) into the period preceding the time which he has fixed for 
the composition of the book, he maintains (p. 141) that “ the 

*Menant, “Babylone et la Chaldee,” p. 254 ff. 

fThis supposition is commended not only by its perfectly reconcil- 
ing all the statements in the case, and by the analogy of Neriglissar 
(Nergal-sharezer), the successful conspirator against his brother-in-law 
Evil-merodach, but likewise by the fact, attested by the Behistun 
inscription, that Nabonned had a son Nebuchadnezzar, who was twice 
personated by impostors in the reign of Darius Hystaspes. 


372 


THE BIBLE. 


four kingdoms are the Babylonian, the Median, the Persian and 
the Grecian (that of Alexander the Great and his successors).” 
But that the Median and the Persian are not two, but one and 
the same kingdom, appears from the fact that the Medes and 
Persians are always united, both in this book and elsewhere. 
It was announced to Belshazzar (v : xxviii). u Thy kingdom is 
divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.” Under Darius 
the Mede the law is that of the Medes and Persians (vi : 8, 
12, 15). The ram with the two horns in the vision of chap, viii 
represents (v : 20) the Kings of Media and Persia. So under 
Ahasuerus (Xerxes) it is Persia and Media (Esther i : 3, 14, 
18), the Persians and the Medes (i: 19). And in the Behistun 
inscription of Darius Hystaspes we find repeatedly the same 
combination, Persia and Media, the Persian and Median army. 
The same thing appears from the nature of the case. The 
Median was not overturned by the Persian kingdom, as the 
Babylonian by the Persian and the Persian by the Grecian ; but 
there was simply a change in the reigning monarch by peaceful 
legitimate succession. The four heads of the third beast (vii : 6) 
indicate the fourfold division of the third monarchy, which was 
true of the Grecian Kingdom (see viii : 8, 22), but inapplicable 
to the Persian. 

If, now, the Medo-Persian is but one kingdom, the second, 
and the Grecian the third, then the fourth kingdom must be 
the Boman — which best suits the description, and which is the 
interpretation that has been put upon it from the beginning. 
This delineation of the character and conquests of the Boman 
empire, the erection of Messiah’s Kingdom while it still lasted, 
its subsequent weakness and subdivision, and the arising of a 
great persecuting power out of it, are predictions which were 
manifestly fulfilled long after the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, 
and which require the assumption of a divine supernatural 
foresight, even though the book were written at as late a period 
as that to which Dr. Kuenen himself assigns it ; not to speak 
of the further prophecy of the seventy weeks (ix : 24, 27), ful- 
filled in the ministry and vicarious death of Jesus Christ at the 
predicted time, and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem. 
Can such evidence of inspiration co-exist with imposture ? Can 
predictions such as these, the reality of which even the most 
advanced critical hypothesis fails to set aside, be joined in the 
same production with pretended predictions which are not 


THE BIBLE. 


373 


really such, which are not genuine utterances of the prophet 
from whom they claim to be, but falsely issued in his name after 
the events had come to pass ? This prediction that the Grecian 
empire would be succeeded by the Roman further shows that 
Daniel did not expect the resurrection and final judgment to 
follow immediately after the deliverance from the persecutions 
of Antiochus Epiphanes, and thus corrects the false inferences 
drawn from the transition in xii: 1, 2. Moreover, if the book 
of Daniel were a spurious production, first written and pub- 
lished 165 B. C., and contained the extravagant and fanatical 
expectations imputed to it by Dr. Kuenen respecting the mirac- 
ulous death of Antiochus in Palestine, to be followed at once 
by the coming of the Messiah and the resurrection — expecta- 
tions which were falsified by the event within two years — must 
it not have been discredited at once ? How could it ever have 
gained credit as the genuine work of a true prophet of God, 
who lived nearly four centuries before ? and, especially, how 
could it have attained such speedy and acknowledged influence 
that the book of Maccabees, in recording the history of these 
times, adopts its very language and borrows its forms of 
expression? — Prof .Wm. Henry Green: Princeton Review j July, 
1878, pp. 309-13. 


374 


THE BIBLE. 


TO THE MEMBERS OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 


£gr REEtfLEAF’S Appeal to the Lawyers— Gentlemen : The sub- 
ject of the following work (Greenleaf’s Testimony of the 
Evangelists),, I hope, will not be deemed so foreign to our 
professional pursuits, as to render it improper for me to 
dedicate it, as I now respectfully do, to you. If a close exam- 
ination of the evidences of Christianity may be expected of one 
class of men more than another, it would seem incumbent 
on us, who make the law of evidence one of our peculiar 
studies. Our profession leads us to explore the mazes of false- 
hood, to detect its artifices, to pierce its thickest veils, to 
follow and expose its sophistries, to compare the statements of 
different witnesses with severity, to discover truth and separate 
it from error. Our fellow-men are well aware of this ; and 
probably they act upon this knowledge more generally, and 
with a more profound repose, than we are in the habit of 
considering. The influence, too, of the legal profession upon the 
community is unquestionably great ; conversant, as it daily is, 
with all classes and grades of men, in their domestic and social 
relations, and in all the affairs of life, from the cradle to the 
grave. This influence we are constantly exerting for good or 
ill; and hence, to refuse to acquaint ourselves with the 
evidence of the Christian religion, or to act as though, having 
fully examined, we lightly esteemed them, is to assume an 
appalling amount of responsibility. 

The things related by the Evangelists are certainly of the 
most momentous character, affecting the principles of our 
conduct here, and our happiness forever. The religion of 
Jesus Christ aims at nothing less than the utter overthrow of 
all other systems of religion in the world ; denouncing them as 
inadequate to the wants of man, false in their foundations, and 
dangerous in their tendency. It not only solicits the grave 
attention of all, to whom its doctrines are presented, but it 
demands their cordial belief, as a matter of vital concernment. 


THE BIBLE. 


375 


These are no ordinary claims; and it seems hardly possible for a 
rational being to regard them with even a subdued interest; 
much less to treat them with mere indifference and contempt. 
If not true, they are little else than the pretensions of a bold 
imposture, which, not satisfied with having already enslaved 
millions of the human race, seeks to continue its encroach- 
ments upon human liberty, until all nations shall be subjugated 
under its iron rule. But if they are well founded and just, 
they can be no less than the requirements of Heaven, addressed 
by the voice of God to the reason and understanding of man, 
concerning things deeply affecting his relations to his sovereign, 
and essential to the formation of his character and of course to 
his destiny, both for this life and for the life to come. Such 
was the estimate taken of religion, even the religion of pagan 
Borne, by one of the greatest lawyers of antiquity, when he 
argued that it was either nothing at all, or was everything. 
Aut undique religionem tolle , aut usquequaque conserva* 

With this view of the importance of the subject, and in the 
hope that the present work may in some degree aid or at least 
incite others to a more successful pursuit of this interesting 
study, it is submitted to your kind regard, by 
Your obedient servant, 

Simon Greenleaf. 

The genuineness of these writings really admits of as little 
doubt, and is as susceptible of as ready proof as that of any 
ancient writings whatever. The rule of municipal law on this 
subject is familiar, and applies with equal force to all ancient 
writings, whether documentary or otherwise. 

His Argument for Genuineness of Documents.— The first enquiry, 
when an ancient document is offered in evidence in our courts, 
is, whether it comes from the proper repository; that is, 
whether it is found in the place where and under the care of 
persons with whom such writings might naturally and reason- 
ably be expected to be found ; for it is this custody which gives 
authenticity to documents found within it. If they come from 
such a place and bear no evident marks of forgery, tjie law 
presumes that they are genuine, and they are admitted to be 
read in evidence, unless the opposing party is able successfully 
to impeach them. * * * 2Iow, this is precisely the case 

*Cicero, Philip. II, ? 43. 


376 


THE BIBLE. 


with the sacred writings. They have been used in the Church 
from time immemorial, and thus are found in the place where 
alone they ought to be looked for. 

If it be objected that the originals are lost, and that copies 
alone are now produced, the principles of the municipal law 
here also afford a satisfactory answer. * * * * If 

any ancient document concerning our public rights were lost, 
copies which had been as universally received and acted upon 
as the Four Gospels have been, would have been received in 
evidence in any of our courts of justice without the slightest 
hesitation. The entire text of the Corpus Juris Civilis is re- 
ceived as authority in all the courts of continental Europe upon 
much weaker evidence of its genuineness ; for the integrity of 
the Sacred Text has been preserved by thejealousy of opposing 
sects beyond any moral possibility of corruption, while that of 
the Roman Civil Law has been preserved only by tacit consent, 
without the interests of any opposing school to watch over and 
preserve it from alteration. 

These copies of the Holy Scriptures, having thus been in 
familiar use in the Churches, from the time when the text was 
committed to writing ; having been watched with vigilance by 
so many sects, opposed to each other in doctrine, yet all 
appealing to these Scriptures for the correctness of their faith; 
and having in all ages, down to this day, been respected as the 
authoritative source of all ecclesiastical power and government, 
and submitted to and acted under, in regard to so many claims 
of right on the one hand, and so many obligations of duty on 
the other ; it is quite erroneous to suppose that the Christian is 
bound to offer any further proof of their genuineness or 
authenticity. It is for the objector to show them spurious ; for on 
him , by the plainest rules of law , lies the burden of proof. If it 
were the case of a claim to a franchise, and a copy of an 
ancient deed or charter were produced in support of the title, 
under parallel circumstances on which to presume its genuine- 
ness, no lawyer, it is believed, would venture to deny its 
admissibility in evidence, nor the satisfactory character of the 
proof. — Testimony of the Evangelists, pp. 9-10. 

The Lord, the Central Truth in Gospel History.— It is now felt on 
all hands that the question turns round the life, the character, 
and the works of Jesus. This is the stronghold which has often 
been assailed and never been taken. With it secured, we can 


THE BIBLE. 


377 


defend the whole territory — Old Testament and New Testament, 
doctrine, history and morality. An ingenious attempt has been 
made in our day to seize this citadel; and this I seek to meet. 

There are two, and only two, ways in which an attack can be 
made on the reality of our Lord’s life. It may be urged, first, 
that the gospel history is a fable, in which it is vain to seek for 
any truth ; or, that it is such a mixture of fact and fable, that it 
is impossible to distinguish the one from the other. It is after 
this manner that Grote proceeds in dealing with the siege of Troy. 
He says, we have no account of the siege, except in books of 
poetry, which do not profess to be history, and which were 
composed ages after the alleged occurrence ; and so we cannot 
be quite sure that there ever was such an event ; or, on the 
supposition that there may have been a basis of fact, we 
cannot separate the actual from the traditional and legendary. 

There have been assailants who took this ground in seek- 
ing to undermine our confidence in the gospel history. It is 
now acknowledged that the attempt was a complete and mis- 
erable failure. Our Lord lived not in fabulous, but in histor- 
ical times, in which Grecian culture and literature were widely 
diffused, and in which Roman government had introduced 
settled law and means of communication. And these four 
gospels are on the very face of them, not poems or legends or 
myths, but historical narratives, professedly by eye-witnesses, 
or persons who received their information from eye-witnesses. 
In their structure and spirit they are simple and artless, life- 
like and truth-like. 

Is that Life an Historic Event 1 — If we maintain that the life ot 
our Lord is not an historical event, we are landed in hopeless 
difficulties ; in consistency, we shall have to give up all ancient 
history, deny that there ever was such an event as the assas- 
sination of Julius Caesar. M. Renan has seen this, and has fol- 
lowed another method. He allows that the four gospels are in 
substance historical books, and that Jesus spoke and acted 
very much as He is represented as doing in these narratives ; 
but then he claims to take so much, and rejects the rest. He 
has thus avoided some of the difficulties in which infidels have 
involved themselves, but He is caught in others quite as form- 
idable. He has drawn out from these four gospels a superfi- 
cially connected and plausible biography which He chooses to 
call <* fifth gospel. But in doing so He has violated all the 


378 


THE BIBLE. 


laws of historical investigation, proceeded on caprice and pre- 
judice, drawn a character inconsistent with itself, and given as 
a history utterly incongruous and incredible. — McCosli’s Chris- 
tianity and Positivism , pp. 221-4. 

Arnold Mentions the Faults of German Critics. — In reading 
through the following chapters, I see that the faults, as I 
think them, of German critics of the Bible are marked with an 
emphasis which renders necessary some acknowledgment of 
the other, the meritorious side in those critics, and of the 
much gratitude due to them. Their criticism, both negative 
and constructive, appears to me to be often extremely fanciful 
and untrustworthy. But in collecting, editing and illustrating 
the original documents for the history of Christianity, those 
critics now perform for the benefit of learning an honorable 
and extremely useful labor, once discharged by Paris, Oxford 
and Cambridge, but discharged by them no longer — perform it 
with modern resources, and for the most part admirably. 
Some of them are men of great ability. Ferdinand Christian 
Baur, whose theories respecting the Fourth Gospel are con- 
troverted in the following pages, was a man of preeminent 
ability. His exegesis is often full of instruction and of light. 
Whoever wishes to be convinced of it has only to turn to his 
remarks on the phrase poor in spirit , or to his exposition of 
the parable of the unjust steward. 

Nevertheless, Baur is, on the w r hole, an unsafe guide, for a 
reason which makes the generality of critics of the Bible, in 
the Protestant faculties of Germany, unsafe guides. These 
professors are under strong temptations to produce new theo- 
ries in Biblical criticism, theories marked by vigor and rigor ; 
and for this purpose to assume that things can be known 
which cannot, to treat possibilities as if they were 
certainties, to make symmetry where one does not find it, 
and so to land both the teacher, and the learner who trusts to 
him, in the most fanciful and unsound conclusions. There are 
few who do not succumb to their temptations, and Baur, I 
think, has succumbed to them. 

Even while acknowledging the learning, talents, and services 
of these critics, I insist upon their radical faults ; because, as 
our traditional theology breaks up, German criticism of the 
Bible is likely to be studied here, more and more, and to the 
untrained reader its vigorous and rigorous theories are, in my 


THE BIBLE. 


379 


opinion, a real danger. They impose upon him by their boldness 
and novelty. To his practical hold on the Bible they conduce 
nothing, but rather divert from it; and yet they are often really 
farther from the truth, all the while, than even the traditional 
view which they profess to annihilate . — Mattlieic Arnold's Pre- 
face to “ God and the Bible .” 

Ancient Dates of Four Gospels. — The gospels give us the sayings 
and doings of Jesus himself, and are therefore of the highest 
importance. How far back can we certainly carry the chain of 
established consent in favor of our form of canonical gospels ? 
Let us begin with Jerome, whom we have already quoted, and 
from him let us go backwards. For Jerome our canonical four 
are already established: “Four gospels, whereof the order is 
this : Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.” That was at the end of the 
fourth century. In the earlier part of the same century for 
Eusebius likewise, whom we have just now cited to show the 
existence of spurious gospels, the canonicity of our four was 
established. 

Let us follow back the chain of great churchmen to the third 
century and to Origen. He died A. D. 254. For him, too, our four 
canonical gospels are “alone undisputed in the Church of God 
upon earth.” Let us ascend to the second century. Irenaeus wrote 
in the last quarter of it, and no testimony to the four gospels 
of our canon can be more explicit than his. “ Matthew it was, 
who, among the Hebrews, brought out in their own language a 
written gospel, when Peter and Paul were preaching in Borne, 
and founding the Church. Then, after their departure, Mark, 
the disciple and interpreter of Peter, he too delivered to us in 
writing what Peter preached ; and Luke, moreover, the follower 
of Paul, set down in a book the gospel preached by Paul. Then 
John, the disciple of the Lord, who also lay on his breast, John 
too published his gospel, living at that time at Ephesus, in 
Asia.” And for Irenseus this number of four, which the gospel 
exhibits, has something fixed, necessary and sacred, “ like the 
four zones of our world, and the four winds.” 

Here, then, about the year 180 of our era, we have from a great 
churchman the most express testimony to the four gospels of 
our canon. Higher than this we cannot find a great church- 
man who gives it us. Ignatius does not give it, nor Polycarp, 
nor Justin Martyr. 

Remarks on Muratori Fragment.— But a famous fragment, discov- 


380 


THE BIBLE. 


ered by Muratori, the Italian antiquary, in the monastery of Bob- 
bio, in North Italy, and published by him in the year 1740, carries 
us, perhaps, to an age a little higher than that of Irenjeus. The 
manuscript containing this fragment is said to be of the eighth 
century, and is in barbarous Latin. The monastery at Bobbio 
was founded by St. Columban, and it has been alleged that the 
barbarisms in our fragment are due to the Irish monks, who 
copied it from the original. Others have assigned to these 
barbarisms an African source ; others, again, have supposed 
that the fragment is a translation of a Greek original, Greek 
having been the language of the Boman Church at the time 
when the author of the fragment lived. However this may be, 
the important matter is that the fragment — called, from its 
finder and first publisher, the “Fragment of Muratori,” the 
“Canon of Muratori ” — gives us with tolerable nearness its 
own date. 

It says that the “Pastor” of Hermas, a work received 
as Scripture by many in the early Church, was written 
“quite lately, in our own times, while Pius, the brother of 
Hermas, was filling the episcopal chair in Borne.” Pius died 
in the year 157 of our era. If we believe what the author 
of the fragment here tells us, we have only to ask our- 
selves, therefore, what “ quite lately, in our times,” means. 
And the words can hardly, one must allow, mean a time 
more than thirty years back from the time of the person 
uttering them. This would give us the year 187 as the latest 
date possible for the original of the fragment in question ; and 
as there is no reason why we should put it at the latest date 
possible, it seems fair to assign it to a time some ten or twelve 
years, perhaps, before A. D. 187; that is, to a date rather 
earlier than the date of the testimony of Irenseus. 

Why the Author of “Supernatural Religion” Rejects it. — But 

the author of “Supernatural Religion” [name unknown, hut 
relied on mainly by B. F. Underwood and others in discussion . — 
Ed.] will not allow the Canon of Muratori to be authentic, 
any more than he will allow to be authentic two fragments of 
Claudius Apollinaris, Bishop of Hierapolis, quoted in the Pas- 
chal Chronicle, which show that Apollinaris, about the year 170 
of our era, knew and received the fourth gospel. The author 
of “ Supernatural Religion ” has a theory that the fourth gospel, 
and, indeed, all the canonical gospels, were not recognized till 


THE BIBLE. 


381 


a particular time. This theory, the canon of Muratori and the 
fragments of Apollinaris do not suit ; so he rejects them. There 
is really no more serious reason to be given for his rejection of 
them. True, Eusebius gives a list of some works of Apol- 
linaris ; and the work on the Paschal controversy, from which 
the two fragments are taken, is not among them. But Eusebius 
expressly says that there were other works of Apollinaris of 
which he did not know the titles. True, Greek was the lan- 
guage of the Boman Church in the second century ; but must 
we think a document forged sooner than admit that a single 
Roman Christian may have chanced to write in Latin, or that a 
document written in Greek may have got translated? No! 
one real reason which the author of “ Supernatural Religion n 
has for rejecting these three pieces of evidence is, that they do 
not suit hte theory . — Matthew Arnold's God and the Bible, pp. 
191-3. 

[Thus we place rationalism against itself. — Ed .] 

Bishop Wilson Remarks About Muratori Fragment.— I come now 
to a most curious and important discovery. Eusebius (A. D. 
315), speaking of the writings of the “ancient ecclesiastical 
men,” says : “There is also come to our hands a dialogue, a dis- 
putation of Caius, held at Rome in the time of Zephyrinus (A. 
D. 195-214), with Proclus, a patron of the Calaphrygian heresy, 
in which he reproves the rashness and audacity of his adver- 
sary, in composing new writings or scriptures, and makes 
mention of only thirteen Epistles of the holy apostle, not 
reckoning that of the Hebrews.” St. Jerome, in his book of 
illustrious men, refers to the same work, and says it was a very 
celebrated disputation. 

After citing this passage of Eusebius, Dr. Lardner expresses 
his deep regret that Eusebius had not given us the catalogue 
itself ; our first complete one being that of Athanasius, 120 or 
130 years later. 

Now, it is remarkable, that in the year 1740, more than fifteen 
centuries after the time of Caius, a fragment, which is most 
probably a part of the lost dialogue — and, if not, is clearly of 
the same age — was discovered by Muratori, in a MS. volume 
in the Ambrosian library at Milan, written in the eighth cen- 
tury. The present learned president of Magdalen College,* 


*Dr. Martin Routh, in his Reliquiae Sacrae, Oxon, 1814. 


382 


THE BIBLE. 


Oxford, has published a critical edition of the fragment. It 
was probably written towards the close of the second cen- 
tury, if not earlier. It contains not merely a distinct refer- 
ence to certain books of the New Testament by name, but a 
formal catalogue of those sacred writings, with observations 
on the circumstances connected with them. It makes a marked 
distinction also between them and ecclesiastical and apocry- 
phal books. The language is striking : “It is not fit that gall 
should be mingled with honey.” In a fragment of it it is impos- 
sible to determine what books might be enumerated in the lost 
parts ; but it actually contains a list of twenty-two books of 
our canon. 

As the fragment is exquisite, and has never, I believe, 
appeared in our language, I shall be excused if I attempt a 
translation, so far as the imperfect state of the reading will 
allow. It begins, of course, abruptly. 

The Fragment Itself. — “ At which, however, he was present, 
and thus he described things. In the third place, is the book 
of the gospel according to St. Luke? Luke, the physi- 
cian, wrote it in due order, in his own name, after the ascension 
of Christ, when Paul had taken him with him, as one also 
studious of truth. Yet neither did he see the Lord in the 
flesh ; but as he had a perfect knowledge of everything, he 
begins to speak from the birth of John. In the fourth place, 
the gospel of John, one of the disciples. He, upon being 
urged to write it by the fellow-disciples and bishops, said to 
those around him, 1 Fast with me now for three days, and what 
shall be revealed to each, let us communicate, that we may 
know whether the gospel shall be written or not.’ The same 
night it was revealed to Andrew, one of the apostles, that 
John should write everything in his own name, all the rest 
giving it their authority. And, therefore, although various 
points are taught in the several gospels, yet the faith of those 
who believe does not differ : since by one guiding and overruling 
Spirit, the same things are declared in all the books concerning 
the nativity, the passion, the resurrection, the conversation of 
the Lord with his disciples, and this twofold advent ; the first 
when he was despised in his humiliation, as it was foretold; 
the second, which is yet future, when he shall be glorious in 
royal power. What wonder, therefore, if John so confidently 
declares everything in his epistles also, saying of himself, 


383 


r 

THE BIBLE. 

Those things which we have seen with our eyes , and heard with 
our ears , and our hands have handled , have we written . For 
thus he professes himself, not only a beholder and hearer, but 
also a writer in due order, of all the wonderful things of the 
Lord.* 

“ But the Acts of all the Apostles are written in one book. 
Luke comprehends them in the work addressed to the excel- 
lent Theophilus, because everything took place in his pres- 
ence ; as other accounts clearly declare the sufferings of Peter 
and the journey of Paul from Borne to Spain.f 

“But the Epistles of Paul, what they are, from what place 
they were sent, or from what cause, he himself declares to 
those who are willing to enquire ; first of all forbidding 
heresy and schism to the Corinthians, and circumcision to the 
Galatians. He wrote, however, more at length to the Bomans, 
according to the order of the Scriptures, teaching that Christ 
was the chief end of them. Each of which things we must of 
necessity discuss, since the blessed apostle Paul himself, 
following the order of his senior John, writes only to seven 
Churches by name, in such order as this : first, to the Corinthians ; 
secondly, to the Ephesians; thirdly, to the Phillipians; fourthly, 
to the Colossians ; fifthly, to the Galatians ; sixthly, to the Thes- 
salonians; seventhly, to the Bomans. But although he wrote 
a second time to the Corinthians and Thessalonians for reproof, 
yet but one Church is acknowledged, scattered over the whole 
world. And John also, in the Apocalypse, although he writes 
to seven Churches, yet speaks to all.§ Further, one Epistle to 
Philemon, and one to Titus, and two to Timothy, from affection 
and love; yet are they sanctified and counted sacred, in the 
honor of the Catholic Church, and in the direction of ecclesi- 
astical discipline.^ There is circulated also another to the 
Laodiceans, and another to the Alexandrians forgedf in the 

*Thus we have the four Gospels acknowledged as canonical. 
fThe Acts of the Apostles are next admitted as canonical. The 
histories of Peter and Paul, afterwards referred to, are not canonical, but 
are merely “other accounts.” 
gSee Note ||. 

^Thirteen Epistles of St. Paul. This agrees with Eusebius’ account. 
The Epistle to the Hebrews is not noticed. 

jThe condemnation of the Apocryphal books is very important : he 
calls them forgeries. 


384 


THE BIBLE. 


name of Paul, to support the heresy of Marcion; and many 
more which cannot be received into the Catholic Church. For 
it is not fit that gall should be mixed with honey. But an 
Epistle of Jude and two of the above-written John, are 
accounted genuine in the Catholic Church.* And the Book of 
Wisdom written by the friends of Solomon for him.|| The 
apocalypses of John and Peter are the only ones we receive, 
which last some Christians do not allow to be read in the 
Church.fl Further, the Shepherd was written by Hennas very 
lately, in our time, in the City of Eome, Bishop Pius, his 
brother, filling the see of the city of Rome. And therefore it 
ought indeed to be read ; but it cannot be published 
in the Church to the people to the end of time, either 
amongst the prophets, whose number is complete, or amongst 
the apostles. 

“But we receive nothing whatever of Arsinoes or Valentinus, 
or Mitiades, who also have written a new Book of Psalms 
for Marcion; the supporters, together with Basilides, of the 
Asiatic Cataphryges.” 

Wilson’s Conclusion Concerning It.— When we consider that this 
statement was made in a public and celebrated disputation at 
Rome — in the face of heretics — for the very purpose of dis- 
tinguishing authentic from pretended books of Scripture — and 
this scarcely a century after the death of St. John — that more- 
over it is referred to by Eusebius in the beginning of the fourth, 
and again by Jerome in the beginning of the fifth century, as 
of acknowledged authority ; and that it was discovered only in 

*Three of the Catholic Epistles are canonical. 

||This sentence is obscure. It has nothing to do with the canon of 
the New Testament. Could it have slipped in from any other part 
of the MSS.? What has the Book of Wisdom to do with the New 
Testament ? 

IT A doubt only is here cast upon the Apocalypse of St. Peter. But 
the strong terms in which the Apocalypse of St. John is mentioned in 
the preceding passage, as well as here, clearly mark the canonical 
authority of that book. It is possible that the Apocalypse of Peter 
may refer to that part of his second Epistle, where “ the new heavens 
and new earth ” are spoken of. 

[The very doubt cast on second Peter and John’s Revelation shows 
the ancientness of the MS. — Ed .] 


THE BIBLE. 


385 


1740, it must be allowed to afford an irresistible confirmation of 
our argument. A manuscript fragment of the second century, 
unexpectedly discovered in the eighteenth, is a proof as extra- 
ordinary as it is conclusive. It establishes the whole account 
of the authenticity. — Daniel Wilson : Evidences, Vol. 1st, pp. 
97-99. 

What if Historical Documents were Fictions or Myths ?— Briefly, 
the principle of the argument is this : If the seemingly histori- 
cal documents of the New Testament were fictions of the 
second century, or were produced like the apocryphal gospels, 
by a mythical tendency in the ages following the origin of 
Christianity, they would not. be found to harmonize with the 
authentic history of the age which they pretend to represent, 
nor if they were composed elsewhere, with the geography of 
the country or countries in which the scene is laid. Such is the 
fact with the apocryphal gospels, as it is also with the ficti- 
tious Book of Judith in the Old Testament apocrypha. If the 
historical documents collected in the New Testament were of 
that sort, it would be impossible to make them fit into the 
known history of the Jewish people and of the Boman Empire 
during the first seventy years of the Christian era. They could 
give no illustrations to history, nor could history illustrate them. 
But what is the fact? The literature of the Roman Empire 
through the first Christian country knew nothing of Chris- 
tianity, or alluded to it only with contempt. Yet what wealth 
* of illustration is poured upon the New Testament from the 
history which that literature gives us, and even from the coins 
and monuments of the period. How is the whole story of Paul, 
for example, from his birth and early education at Tarsus to 
his latest epistle from the prison in which he was waiting for a 
martyr’s death at Rome, adjusted and fittedinto its place in the 
history of the Roman Empire as it then was? The entire New 
Testament, with the account which it gives of Christ, and of 
the world-movement which began in his life and death, finds 
and fills a gap in the world’s history, and is itself a grand 
coincidence. — Leonard Bacon: Preface to Conybeare and How- 
son’s Paul. 

Transcribers and Their Corruptions. — It would have been incon- 
sistent with the common sentiments and practices of mankind 
for transcribers to make such alterations and additions as have 

Y 


386 


THE BIBLE. 


been imagined, in the sacred books which they were copying. 

No one can be so dull as not to feel the propriety and impor- 
tance of preserving the genuine text of books which are 
regarded as works of authority, or as possessing a peculiar 
character in consequence of their having been composed by a 
particular author. In proportion as a work is of higher 
authority, this sentiment will be stronger. It would be idle to 
imagine, that the habit of making additions and alterations at 
will, which is attributed to the transcribers of the gospels, was 
common in ancient times, and practiced in the transcription of 
other writings ; the histories, for instance, of Thucydides or 
Tacitus. But, with the great body of believers, the gospels 
were peculiarly guarded from corruption; and what we appre- 
hend so little concerning other writings, is still less to be 
apprehended concerning them. The Christians of the first two 
centuries, it cannot be doubted, valued very highly their sacred 
books, and none more highly than those which contained 
records of the actions and discourses of Christ. But they 
valued them as sacred books, and as authentic histories, and 
not as the patchwork of unknown transcribers. They would 
not, therefore, suffer them gradually to assume the latter char- 
acter. They would not cause or permit alterations and addi- 
tions to be silently introduced into books of history, the authen- 
ticity of which would be thus destroyed; and sacred books, 
the peculiar character of which would, in consequence, be lost. 

Interpolation a Crime. — To interpolate or alter anything in * 
books of the latter kind has commonly been considered as a 
crime, bordering upon sacrilege. This sentiment may be coun- 
teracted in a certain degree ; but it is a very general, a very 
natural, and a very strong one. The care of any community 
in preserving their sacred books from corruption will be pro- 
portioned to the value they set upon those books ; and the 
degree in which they value them will be proportioned to the 
interest which they feel in their religion. But no men ever 
felt that interest more strongly than the Christians of the first 
two centuries. There is, therefore, as we might expect, abun- 
dant evidence extant in their writings, that they had as great 
reverence for the sacred books of our religion, and were as 
little disposed to make or to suffer an admixture of foreign 
matter with their genuine text, as Christians of the present 
day. — Norton’s Genuineness of Gospels, pp. 36-7. 


THE BIBLE. 


387 


Celsus, the first opponent, in writing, of the Christians, and 
who flourished about the middle of the second century, makes 
such valuable concessions respecting the genuineness of the 
Gospels, that we give a condensed mass of quotations from 
him as compiled from Origen, by Doddridge. 

Celsus’ Eighty Quotations. — “ He quotes from the Gospels such 
a variety of particulars, that the enumeration of them will 
almost prove an abridgment of the Evangelist’s history, par- 
ticularly, that Jesus, who, he says, was represented as the 
Word of God (p. 79), and who was the author of the Christian 
name (p. 21), and also called himself the Son of God, was a man 
of Nazareth (p. 343), that he was the reputed son of a carpenter 
(p. 30), that his mother’s pregnancy was at first suspected, but 
that it was pretended that his body was formed in her womb 
by the Spirit of God ; or, as he elsewhere expresses it, pro- 
duced by a divine operation, (p. 30.) And that to remove the 
carpenter’s prejudice, an angel appeared to him to inform him 
of this. (p. 269.) That when he was born, a star appeared in 
the east to certain Magi, who came to adore him. (pp. 31, 45.) 
The consequence of which was the slaughter of the infants by 
the order of Herod, hoping thereby to destroy Jesus, and to 
prevent his reign, (p. 45.) But that his parents were warned 
by an angel to fly into Egypt, to preserve his life, as if his 
Father could not have protected him at home (pp. 51, 266), and 
that he continued in Egypt for awhile ; where he says he had 
an opportunity of learning magic, p. 22. 

“He farther represents it as recorded in those books, that 
when Jesus was washed by John, the appearance of a dove 
descended upon him, and that a voice was heard from heaven, 
declaring him to be the son of God. (pp. 31, 105.) That he was- 
vexed by a temptation, and the assaults of an evil spirit, (p. 
303). He calls Christ himself a carpenter (p. 300), and insults, 
his mean life, lurking from place to place (p. 47) ; gathering up 
ten or twelve poor men, without character or standing, publi- 
cans and men that used the sea (p. 47) ; represents Christ as a 
beggar, sometimes hungry and thirsty (p. 55) ; speaks of his 
being rejected by many that heard him, and hints at an attempt 
to throw him down a precipice, (p. 298.) 

“He grants that he wrought miracles, and particularly that he 
cured some sick people, raised some from the dead, and multi- 
plied some loaves ; but speaks of others doing the like. (p. 53.) 


388 


THE BIBLE. 


Mentions his curing the lame and the blind, (p. 87.) He lampoons 
the expression, ‘Thy faith hath saved thee.’ (p. 8.) He hints at 
several things concerning the doctrine of Christ, especially in 
the Sermon on the Mount (pp. 343 and 370) ; that he declared no 
man could serve two masters (p. 380) ; and would have his 
disciples learn from the birds of the air and the lilies of the 
field, not to be too careful about food and raiment, (p. 343.) 
He refers to Christ’s saying, that it was easier for a camel to 
go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to be saved 
(286 and 288); and observes that Jesus denounced woes upon 
his hearers for their obstinate infidelity, (p. 107.) He also says 
that his disciples, in their writings, pretend that he foretold 
all things he was to suffer (p. 67) ; and his resurrection (p. 93) ; 
and likewise that deceivers would come and work miracles, 
and speaks of the author of these wicked works by the name 
of Satan (p. 89). 

“He objects, that Jesus withdrew himself from those who 
sought to put him to death (p. 62), and yet afterwards did not 
avoid death, knowing it was to come (p. 70). He speaks of his 
eating the flesh of a lamb (p. 350); and that he foretold to his dis- 
ciples that they would give him up to his enemies (p. 72). That 
before his sufferings, he prayed, ‘Father, if it be possible, let 
this cup pass away’ (p. 75). That he was betrayed by his disci- 
ples, though robbers are faithful to their leaders (pp. 62 and 66). 
That none of his disciples dared to suffer for him (p. 86) ; and 
that he professed to undergo his sufferings in obedience to his 
Father (p. 75) ; and said these things ought to happen (p. 332). 
That he was denied by one who knew him to be God (p. 71), to 
whom, as well as to the traitor, he had foretold what he would 
do (p. 72). 

“He speaks of Jesus as igi 1 uniously bound (p. 282); as 
scourged (p. 79) ; as crowned with thorns, with a reed in His 
hand, and arrayed in a scarlet robe, and as condemned (p. 81) ; as 
having gall given Him to drink (p. 174); as shamefully treated, 
(p. 282), and distended on the cross (p. 82). He derides Him for 
not exerting His divinity to punish those outrages (p. 81) ; as 
taking no vengeance on His enemies (p. 404) ; as incapable to 
deliver Himself and not delivered by His Father in this 
extremity (p. 41) ; and as greedily drinking gall and vinegar 
through impatience of thirst (pp. 82 and 340). 

“ He observes, it was pretended, that when Jesus expired 


THE BIBLE. 


389 


upon the cross there was darkness and an earthquake (p. 94) ; 
that when He arose, He needed an angel to remove the 
stone of the sepulchre, though He was said to be the Son of God 
(p. 266) ; and according to some, one, and according to others, 
two angels came to the sepulchre to inform the women of His 
resurrection (p. 266) ; that after His resurrection, He did not 
appear to his enemies (p. 98), but first to a woman that He had 
dispossessed (p. 94 and 104) ; that He appeared to a few of His 
disciples, showing them the marks of His crucifixion, and 
appeared and disappeared on a sudden (pp. 94 and 104). And He 
says, 1 We take these things from your own writings, to wound 
you with your own weapons 7 *(p. 106 ).” — Laurence W. Scott: 
Hand-Book of Christian Evidence , pp. 204-6. 

Was Matthew First Written in Greek or Hebrew ?— Hitherto, all 
the evidence which can be gathered from the circumstances of 
the early Church, and the traditions of the origin of the 
Gospels, has tended to establish the existence of an original 
oral Gospel, definite in general outline and even in language, 
which was committed to writing in the lapse of time in various 
special shapes according to the typical forms which it assumed 
in the preaching of different Apostles. It is probable that this 
oral Gospel existed from the first in Aramaic and Greek, as 
would naturally be the case in a country where two languages 
were generally current. The teaching of St. Matthew u among 
his own countrymen” is expressly said to have been in 
“ Hebrew,” and it is not less certain that Greek must have 
been the common medium of intercourse with the Hellenists. 
The step from these oral narratives to written records in 
Hebrew and Greek is simple and natural ; but nothing has 
been said yet of the internal evidence to be derived from the 
Gospels themselves ; and still it is on this that the decision of 
the question of their origin mainly depends. General indica- 
tions and beliefs, probabilities and seeming coincidences, must 
be abandoned if they are clearly opposed to the internal 
character of the books — to the peculiarities of their mutual 
relations, to the extent and limit of their similarity and differ- 
ence, to the general unity by which they are held together, and 
to the special characteristics by which they are distinguished, 
It may be asked whether there is any intimate external connec- 
tion between the gospels ? Whether the resemblances which 
exist point to the existence of a common source or to mutual 


390 


TO TITHE BIBLE. 


dependence ? Whether, in the latter case, it is possible to 
determine the order of precedence, or in the former the 
nature — oral or written — of the original records? Various 
answers have been given to these questions, but the first, at 
least, may be regarded as definitely settled. No one at present 
would maintain, with some of the older scholars of the 
Reformation, that the coincidences between the Gospels are 
due simply to the direct and independent action of the same 
spirit upon the several writers. The explanation of the 
phenomena which they present is sought by universal consent 
in the presence of a common element, though opinions are still 
divided as to its nature. The original source of the 
resemblance may lie in the influence of an original tradition, or 
of a popular narrative, or in the earliest written Gospel itself ; 
but the existence of some such source is admitted on all 
sides. — B. F. Westcott: Introduction to the Gospels, pp. 198-9. 

Froude’s Opinion of It. — The first notice of a Gospel of St. 
Matthew is in the well-known words of Papias, a writer who in 
early life might have seen St. John. The works of Papias are 
lost. * * * * A surviving fragment of him says 

that St. Matthew put together the discourses of our Lord in 
Hebrew, and that every one interpreted them as he could. 
Pantsenus, said by Eusebius to have been another contempo- 
rary of the Apostles, was reported to have gone to India, to 
have found there a congregation of Christians which had been 
established by St. Bartholomew, and to have seen in use among 
them this Hebrew Gospel. Origen repeats the story which in 
his time had become the universal Catholic tradition, that St. 
Matthew’s was the first Gospel, that it was written in Hebrew, 
and that it was intended for the use of the Jewish converts. 
Jerome adds that it was unknown when or by whom it was 
rendered into a Greek version. That was all which the Church 
had to say ; and what had become of that Hebrew original no 
one could tell. 

That there existed a Hebrew Gospel in very early times is 
well-authenticated ; there was a gospel called the Gospel of the 
Ebionites or Nazarenes, of which Origen possessed a copy, 
and which St. Jerome thought it worth while to translate ; this, 
too, is lost, and Jerome’s translation of it, also ; but the negative 
evidence seems conclusive that it was not the lost Gospel of 
St. Matthew. Had it been so, it could not have failed to be 


THE BIBLE. 


391 


recognized, although from such accounts of it as have been pre- 
served, it possessed some affinity with St. Matthew’s Gospel. 
In one instance, indeed, it gave the right reading of a text which 
has perplexed orthodox commentators, and has induced others 
to suspect that the Gospel in its present form could not have 
existed before the destruction of Jerusalem. The Zachariah, 
the son of Barachiah, said by St. Matthew to have been slain 
between the Temple and the altar, is unknown to Old Testa- 
ment history, while during the siege of Jerusalem a Zachariah, 
the son of Barachiah, actually was killed exactly in the 
manner described. But in the Ebionite Gospel the same words 
were found, with this slight but important difference, that the 
Zachariah in question is there called the son of Jehoiadah, and 
is at once identified with the person whose murder is related in 
the Second Book of Chronicles. The later translator of St. 
Matthew had probably confused the names . — James Anthony 
Froude : Short Studies , Vol. l v pp. 214-15. 

Norton’s View. — The original of Matthew’s Gospel, being used 
by the Hebrew Christians, naturally obtained the name of “ the 
Gospel according to the Hebrews.” But copies of it were 
extant containing spurious additions and variations. The 
fathers, with rare exceptions, such as Origen and Jerome, from 
their ignorance of the Hebrew, could have known but little of 
the contents of any copy, except by report. Jerome particu- 
larizes certain additions, which he found in that used by him. 
But we have no assurance, that there were not other copies 
extant, even in his time, more conformed to the original text. 

In regard to the essential identity of the Gospel of the 
Hebrews with the Gospel of Matthew, it is to be ob- 
served, that all the interpolations and changes in the 
former, of which we have any credible account, bear but a very 
small proportion to the contents of the Gospel of Matthew. 
Yet it is probable that Jerome has noticed all or nearly all the 
remarkable variations existing in his copy of the Gospel of the 
Hebrews. It appears, therefore, that, throughout far the 
greater part of their contents, they coincided with each other. 
This must have been the fact, or it would not have been 
believed that they were originally the same book. Thus agree- 
ing together in far the greater part of their contents, they 
were the same book. The variations found in copies of the 
Gospel of the Hebrews can be considered only as variations in 


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particular copies of a common original. The supposition, there- 
fore, is altogether groundless, that the Gospel of Matthew 
and the Gospel of the Hebrews were different works, by 
different authors. 

Matthew wrote in the native language of the Jewish Chris- 
tians. He wrote particularly for their use. There was nothing 
in his Gospel to offend their national prejudices. It is not to 
be believed, therefore, that they rejected his Gospel, and sub- 
stituted an anonymous gospel in its stead. 

It was, as we have seen, the common belief of the Gentile 
Christian, that the Jewish Christians used the original of 
Matthew’s Gospel in a pure or corrupted state. The Jewish 
Christians, consequently, affirmed that they used Matthew’s 
Gospel; for otherwise such a belief could not have prevailed. 
But no probable reason can be given why one party should 
have affirmed this fact, or why the other party should have 
believed it, except its truth. 

We conclude, then, that Matthew’s Gospel was originally 
written in Hebrew ; and that it was preserved in this language, 
in copies with a text more or less pure, by the Jewish Chris- 
tians till about the fifth century, when the traces of their exist- 
ence as a sect disappear from history. — Norton’s Genuineness 
of Gospels, p. 430. 

Fisher’s Conclusion. — *On the question whether the first Gospel 
was written in Aramaic, there is not less difference of opinion 
than on the question of unity of authorship. The “ Gospel of 
the Hebrews,” a gospel resembling our Matthew, was in use 
among the Judaizing Christians, and it is held by some that 
this circumstance early gave rise to the erroneous supposition 
that the Greek Gospel is a translation from the Hebrew. The 
verbal coincidences between our Matthew and the other Synop- 
tists require us to assume, either that the first Gospel was 
written at the outset in the language in which we have it, or 
that, in the process of rendering it into the Greek, it was 
accommodated verbally, to the extent to which verbal corres- 
pondences exist, to the Greek tradition already established. 
“The parts of the Aramaic oral Gospel,” says Professor West- 
cott, “ which were adopted by St. Matthew, already existed in 


*This should be read in connection with the preceding quotation, 
taken from Froude, as the latest and safest utterance. 


THE BIBLE. 


393 


the Greek counterpart. The change was not so much a 
revision as a substitution.” Yet such a revision of the Greek 
oral gospel as would exactly answer to Matthew’s revision of 
the Aramaic, may, perhaps, not have been committed to writing 
till the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, when the Hebrew 
and Greek Christians ceased to be in close connection. Then, 
Professor Westcott holds, the Greek Gospel was written, u not 
indeed as a translation, but as a representation of the original, 
as a Greek oral counterpart was already current.”* The 
uncertainty as to the language in which the First Gospel was 
originally written, and difficulties attending the supposition 
that Matthew wrote it in its present form, do not preclude a 
safe judgment respecting the antiquity and credibility of the 
Gospel as it stands. The Greek Matthew of the Canon has 
pervading characteristics of style. To mention one peculiarity 
— the “ kingdom of heaven,” is a phrase which occurs thirty- 
two times in this Gospel, and occurs nowhere else in the New 
Testament. There is a long list of words which either occur 
in Matthew alone among the Synoptists, or occur so frequently 
in Matthew, as to form a distinctive peculiarity of this Gospel. 
* * * * There is internal evidence, to which we shall 

advert on a subsequent page, which proves that the First 
Gospel, as we have it, existed as early as the destruction of 
Jerusalem by Titus. There is nothing to militate against this 
conclusion, in the testimony of Papias, nor in anything to be 
found in the early Fathers. It is quoted as a sacred Scripture 
by the author of the epistle of Barnabas.f It is a safe conclu- 
sion that the apostle Matthew had such a relation to this 
Gospel as naturally caused his name to be uniformly connected 
with it in the ecclesiastical tradition as its author. 

On a review of the whole subject, we cannot doubt that the 
first Three Gospels sprang both from oral and written sources. 
It is altogether probable that memoranda would be very early 
made of particular events, or groups of events, in the life of 
Jesus. They would not only be related orally, but would also 
be put in writing. The same is true of the discourses of Jesus. 
It seems probable that these earliest records were of Galilean 
origin. The next step would be the combination of such dis- 


*Introduction to Gospels, p. 231. 

fHilgenfeld places the date of this epistle as early as A. D. 97. 


394 


THE BIBLE. 


tinct memoranda, together with additional matter derived 
orally, in connected narratives. In this process the matter was 
massed, so to speak, under the three heads, the Savior’s Bap- 
tism and Temptation, His labors in Galilee, and His experiences 
at Jerusalem. To these essays in the composition of gospels 
Luke refers (Luke i : 1, 2). Before he wrote, many had under- 
taken the same task. Their materials were the oral and written 
testimony of the immediate witnesses of the ministry of 
Jesus. The efforts of those previous authors had been to 
bring these materials into orderly arrangement. He sets about 
the same work, and adverts to the advantages which he had for 
successfully accomplishing it. There is reason to believe that 
Mark’s Gospel, being of earlier date, was one of the prior gos- 
pels which Luke speaks of; and since the testimony of Papias 
acquaints us with the fact that Mark was a hearer of Peter, a 
Gospel composed under such advantages would naturally be 
used by Luke much more than other documents not possessed 
of an equal claim to attention. It is certainly not improbable 
that a collection of discourses of Jesus, accompanied by brief 
explanatory matter of a narrative cast, was early composed ; 
and it may be that the gospel of Matthew in its present form is 
the result of an amplification of this original document. In 
this case, it is a question not easy to determine, whether the 
primitive Matthew or the first Gospel in its existing form, was 
used by Luke, in addition to the other sources of information 
as to the discourses of Christ, which were at his command. — 
0. P. Fisher : The Beginnings of Christianity, Sept., 1877, pp. 
281-85. 

Last Chapter of John a Proof of Ancientness.— This last chapter 
of his Gospel is in every way a most remarkable testimony to 
the influence of St. John’s person and writings. Differences 
of language, no less than the abruptness of its introduction 
and its substance, seem to mark it clearly as an addition to the 
original narrative ; and the universal concurrence of all out- 
ward evidence no less certainly establishes its claim to a place 
in the canonical book. It is a ratification of the Gospel, and 
yet from the lips of him who wrote it ; it allows time for the 
circulation of a wide-spread error, and yet corrects the error 
by the authoritative explanation of its origin. The testimony, 
though upon the extreme verge of the Apostolic period, yet 
falls within it, and the Apostle, in the consciousness (as it 


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395 


seems) of approaching death, confirms again his earlier record, 
and corrects the mistaken notion which might have cast doubt 
upon the words of the Lord. (See John xxi: 23.) * * * 

So much, however, is attested by competent authority, that St. 
John composed his Gospel at a later time than the other Evan- 
gelists ; and it can scarcely be wrong to refer the book to the 
last quarter of the first century, and in its present form prob- 
ably to the last decennium of the period. This late date of the 
writing is scarcely of less importance than its peculiarly 
personal character, if we would form a correct estimate of the 
evidence which establishes its early use and authority. It 
passed into circulation when the first oral Gospel was widely 
current in three authoritative forms, and it bore upon its surface, 
no less than in its inmost depths, a stamp of individuality by 
which it was distinguished from the type of recognized tradi- 
tion. Yet these facts, which must at first have limited the use 
of the book, contribute to the clearness of the testimonies by 
which the use is evinced. There is not in this case the same 
ambiguity as to the origin of a striking coincidence of language, 
as in the early parallels with the Synoptic Gospels, since there 
is no trace of any definite tradition similar to the record of St. 
John. The record was itself a creative source, and not a 
summary; the opening of a new field of thought, and not the 
gathered harvest. — B. F. Westcott : Introduction to the Gospels, 
pp, 259-60. 

Overwhelming Proofs of John Being Authentic.— Of St. John’s 
Gospel we do not propose to speak in this place ; it forms a 
subject by itself; and of that it is enough to say that the 
defects of external evidence which undoubtedly exist seem 
overborne by the overwhelming proofs of authenticity con- 
tained in the Gospel itself. — James Anthony Froude : Short 
Studies , Vol. 1, p. 216. 

Norton Attests the Four Gospels.— The Gospel of Luke, then, 
came down from the apostolic age as his work, with his own 
attestation to its genuineness. This being so, the other three 
Gospels could not have obtained reception as sacred books, in 
common with it, if they had not been the works of the authors 
to whom they were ascribed. 

Confining our view merely to the evidence presented in this 
chapter, we may regard the result of it under still another 
aspect. Luke testifies to the genuineness of his own Gospel; 


896 


THE BIBLE. 


Papias, to that of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark : it follows 
that the authority of all three was established in the time of 
Papias. Now, this was a period but just after the death of St. 
John, when thousands were living who had seen that last sur- 
vivor of the apostles, many perhaps who had made a pilgrimage 
to Ephesus to behold his countenance and listen to his voice, 
and hundreds who belonged to the Church over which he had 
presided in person. It is incredible, therefore, that, before the 
time of Papias, a spurious gospel should have been received as 
his work ; and after the time of Papias, when the authority of 
the first three Gospels was established, the attempt to introduce 
a gospel falsely ascribed to St. John must have been, if possible, 
still more impracticable. — Norton’s Genuineness of Gospels, 
pp. 141-2. 

The Adaptedness of Gospels to the Persons to Whom they were 
Written. — The first gospel, that of St. Matthew, was evidently a 
Gospel designed for the pious Israelite, for him who was await- 
ing the theocratic King, the Son of Abraham, the Son of David; 
who desired to find in the New Testament the fulfillment of the 
prophecies of the Old, and in Christianity the perfect flower, 
of which Judaism was the root and stem. And as among the 
Epistles that of St. James, so among the Gospels, this of St. 
Matthew was to serve as the gentle and almost imperceptible 
transition for so many as clung to the forms of Old Testament 
piety ; and desired to hold fast the historic connection of all 
God’s dealings from the first. 

But the second Gospel, written, as all Church tradition 
testifies, under the influence of St. Peter, and at Rome, bears 
marks of an evident fitness for the practical Roman world — 
for the men, who, while others talked had done; and who 
would not at first crave to hear what Christ had spoken, but 
what He had wrought. It is eminently the Gospel of action. 
It is brief ; it records comparatively few of our Lord’s sayings, 
almost none of his longer discourses ; it occupies itself mainly 
with his works, with the mighty power of his ministry, into 
which ministry it rushes almost without a preparatory note. 
Some deeper things it has not, but presents a soul-stirring 
picture of the conquering might and energy of Christ and of 
his Word. 

But the third Gospel, that of St. Luke, composed by the 
trusted companion of St. Paul, and itself the correlative of his 


THE BIBLE. 


397 


Epistles, while it sets forth one and the same Christ as the two 
which went before, yet, in some .respects, sets Him forth in 
another light. Not so much, with St. Matthew, “Jesus Christ, a 
minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm 
the promises made unto the fathers” — not so much, with St. 
Mark, Jesus Christ, “the Lion of the tribe of Judah,” rushing 
as with lion-springs from victory to victory; but Jesus Christ, 
the Savior of all men, is the object of his portraiture. This is 
what he loves to dwell on — the manner in which not Israel 
alone, but the whole heathen world, was destined to glorify 
God for his mercy in Christ Jesus; he describes Him as the 
loving physician, the gracious healer of all, the Good Sa- 
maritan that bound up the wounds of every stricken heart; 
in whom all the small, and despised, and crushed, and down- 
trodden of the earth should find a gracious and ready helper. 
Therefore, and in accordance with this, his plan, has he 
gathered up for us much which no other has done; he sets 
the seventy disciples for the world over against St. Matthew’s 
twelve Apostles for Israel ; he breaks through narrow national 
distinctions — tells of that Samaritan that alone showed kindness 
— of that other, who, of ten, alone remembered to be thankful ; 
and his, too, and his only, the parable of the Prodigal Son, 
itself a Gospel within The Gospel. 

But to hasten on from the characteristics of the earlier 
three, which might well detain us much longer, something was 
yet wanting — a Gospel in which the higher speculative tenden- 
cies, which were given to men not to be crushed or crippled, 
should find their adequate satisfaction — a Gospel which should 
link itself on with whatever had occupied the philosophic mind 
of heathen or of Jew, the correction of all which in this was 
false — the complement of all which was deficient. And such 
he gave us, for whom the Church has ever found the soaring 
eagle as the Httest emblem — he who begins by declaring that 
the Word of God, whereof men had already learned to speak 
so much, was also the Son of God, and had been made flesh, 
and had dwelt among us, fall of grace and truth — who, too, has 
brought out the inner, and, so to speak, the mystical relations 
of the faithful with their Lord, as none other before him had 
done. 

The First Three Gospels Contrasted with the Fourth.— It is true, 
that this fulness under which the life of our Lord has been set 


398 


THE BIBLE. 


forth to us, being, as it is, one of the gracious designs of God 
for our good, has been laid hold of by adversaries of the Faith, 
who would fain wrest it to their ends. Taking the difference 
where it is the most striking, they have bidden us to note how 
unlike the Christ of the first three Gospels and of the fourth ; 
and what a different coloring is spread over this Gospel and 
over those ; and they would draw their conclusion, that either 
here or there historic accuracy must be wanting, that both por- 
traits cannot be faithful. We allow the charge, so far as the 
difference , and only reject it when it assumes a diversity , of 
setting forth. There are features of our Lord which we should 
have missed, but for his portraiture who lay upon the Lord’s 
bosom ; deep words which he has caught up, for which no 
other words that any other has recorded would have been 
adequate substitutes. But what then? This is not a weak 
point with us, but a strong. We rejoice and glory in this, 
rather than seek to gloss it over or conceal it. So far from 
being first detected by a hostile criticism, an early Father of 
the Church had expressed this very distinction in words which 
in sound perhaps are almost over-bold, styling the first three 
Gospels, euanggelia somatika, and the fourth, an euanggelia 
pneumatikon. Yet it is needless to observe, that herein he 
meant not to cast the faintest slight on those by comparison 
with this, but would only imply that those set forth more the 
outer, and this the inner, life of Christ. 

Analogies in Xenophon and Plato.— And for the fact itself, do 
we not find analogies to it, however weak ones they may be, in 
lower regions of the spiritual life? To take an example, which 
must be familiar to every scholar — how different the Socrates 
of Xenophon, and the Socrates of Plato. Yet, shall we therefore 
leap to the conclusion, that if the one has painted the master 
truly, then the other has portrayed him falsely? Such a con- 
clusion may lie upon the surface ; it might appear unto us an 
easy solution of the difficulty, yet were it a very different 
solution from that to which all the profoundest inquirers into 
the matter have arrived. Were it not wiser to suppose, with 
them, that each of the great scholars of the Sage appropriated 
and carried away, as from a rich and varied treasure-house, that 
which he prized the most, that which was most akin to himself 
and his own genius, that which by the natural process of assimila- 
tion he had made most truly and entirely his own : — the practi- 


THE BIBLE. 


399 


cal soldier, the man of strong common sense, appropriating and 
carrying away his world-wisdom, his popular philosophy; the 
more meditative disciple taking as his portion the deeper specu- 
lations of their common Master concerning the Good and the 
True ? And if thus it prove with eminent servants of the Truth 
— if they are so rich and manifold that they present themselves 
under divers aspects to divers men, it being appointed them in 
their lower sphere to feed many — if, like some rich composite 
Corinthian metal, they yield iron for this man’s spade, and gold 
for the other’s crown, how much more was this to be looked for 
from Him, who was the King of Truth, who has to feed and en- 
rich, not some, but all ; and this , not in some small and scanty 
measure, but who was to satisfy all in all ages with goodness and 
truth? How inevitable was it that He, the Sun of the spiritual 
heaven, should find no single mirror large enough to take in 
all his beams — should only be adequately presented to the 
world, when many from many sides did, under the direct teach- 
ings of God’s Spirit, undertake to set him forth. 

Symbols of the Four Gospels. — Doubtless the pregnant symbol 
of the early Church, according to which the four Gospels 
found their type, and prophecy in the four rivers of Paradise, 
that together watered the whole earth, going each a different 
way, and yet issuing all from a single head ; a symbol, which 
we find evermore repeated in the works of early Christian art, 
wherein from a single cross-surmounted hill, four streams are 
seen welling out; this symbol was so great and general a 
favorite, because it did embody under a beautiful image, this 
fact, namely, how the Gospels were indeed four, and yet in 
their higher unity but one. And so not less, when the Evange- 
lists, were found, as they often were, in the four living creatures 
of Ezekiel’s vision, of whom each with a different countenance 
looked a different way, and yet all of them together upheld 
the throne and chariot of God, and ever moved as being 
informed by one and the self-same Spirit: this, too, was 
something more and better than a mere fanciful playing with 
Scripture ; there was a deep truth lying at the root of this 
application, and absolutely justifying its use. — R. C. Trench : 
Rulsean Lectures , pp. 43-48. 

John and Paul, Their Purposes Compared.— And as we have a 
Gospel which stands thus four-square, with a side facing each 
side of the spiritual world, so have we a twofold development 


400 


THE BIBLE. 


of the more dogmatic element of the New Testament. For, 
like as the seed, one in itself, yet falls into halves in the process 
of its fructifying, or as the one force of the magnet manifests 
itself at two opposing poles, exactly according to the same law, 
reappearing in the spiritual world, we have two developments of 
the same Christian Theology, which make themselves felt from 
the very first, whereof St. Paul may be taken as chief represen- 
tative of the one and St. John of the other. We cannot do 
more than trace the distinction in some of its broadest features. 
We see, then, St. Paul making man the starting point of his 
theology. The divine image in man, that image lost, the 
impossibility of its restoration by any powers of its own ; the 
ever deeper errors of the sin — darkened intellect; the ever 
vainer struggles of the sin-enslaved will ; — it is from this human 
side of the truth that he starts ; these are the grounds which 
he first lays — as eminently in his great dogmatic Epistle 
to the Romans. And only when he has brought out this confes- 
sion of a fall, of an infinite short-coming from the true ideal. of 
humanity, and from the glory of God; only when the cry, “Oh, 
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?” has been 
wrung out from the bond-slaves of evil, does he bring in the 
mighty Redeemer, and the hymn of praise, the “ I thank God 
through Jesus* Christ” of the redeemed. But St. John, upon 
the other hand, starts from the opposite point, from the 
theology in the more restricted sense of the word ; in this 
justifying the title o theologos , which he bears. His center 
and starting point is the Divine Love, and out of that he 
unfolds all ; not delineating, as his brother Apostle, any mighty 
birth-pangs, in which the new creature is born ; since rather in 
that passing from death unto life, and in that abiding in the 
Father and in the Son which follows therefrom, the dis- 
covery of sin does not run long before, but rather goes 
hand in hand with, the discovery of the grace of God 
for forgiving, and the power of God for overcoming, that sin 
which by the Spirit of Christ is gradually revealed. Thus we 
have man delivered in St. Paul, God delivering in St. John; 
man rising in the one, God stooping in the other; and thus 
each travels over a hemisphere in the great orb of Christian 
Truth, and they, not each singly, but between them, embrace 
and encircle it all. 

For this is a part of the glory of Christ as compared with 


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401 


his servants, as compared with the chiefest of his servants 
that He alone stands at the absolute center of humanity, the 
one completely harmonious man, unfolding all which was in 
that humanity equally upon all sides, fully upon all sides— the 
only one in whom the real and ideal met, and were absolutely 
at one. — E. G. Trench : Hulsean Lectures , pp. 48-50. 

Irenseus’ Epistle . — 11 For while I was still a boy I saw you in 
Lower Asia, with Poly carp, when you were in a brilliant posi- 
tion in the royal palace, and strove to approve yourself to him. 
For I recall better what occurred at that time than I do recent 
events, since what we learned in childhood, being united to 
the soul as it grows up, becomes incorporated with it, so that 
I can even describe the place in which the blessed Polycarp 
used to sit and discourse his goings out, too, and his comings 
in, the manner of his life and form of his body, and his 
discourses which he used to deliver to the people, and how he 
spoke of his familiar intercourse with John and with the rest 
of those who had heard the Lord, and how he would call to 
mind their words. And whatever things he had heard from 
them respecting the Lord, both as to his miracles and his teach- 
ing, just as Poly carp had received it from the eye-witnesses of 
the Word of Life, he recounted it agreeably to the Scriptures. 
These things, through the mercy of God which was upon me, 
I diligently heard, and treasured them up, not on paper, but in 
my heart; and I am continually, by the grace of God, revolving 
these things in my mind/ 7 — Irenceus’ Epistle to Florinus. 

Comments on Epistle. — The above extract from Irenseus needs 
no comment. It discovers to us the associations in which he 
stood in his youth. With Irenseus, the Johannine authorship 
of the Fourth Gospel is a fact perfectly familiar and above 
question. He even argues fancifully that there must be four, 
and only four, Gospels finding analogies in the four winds and 
the four quarters of the globe. This only shows how free 
from every shadow of doubt was his confidence in the authen- 
ticity of the Gospels acknowledged by the Church. 

Now, is it supposable that Irenseus, and his contemporaries 
with him, received this Gospel as the work of the Apostle 
John, without doubt or question, while Polycarp, John’s pupil 
and their teacher, was either ignorant of its existence, or 
rejected it? The testimony of Irenseus virtually involves in 
it the testimony of the Teacher who lived until Irenseus 
z 


402 


THE BIBLE. 


grown up to manhood. Polycarp was a representative man. 
That he received a Gospel as from John which the Bishops and 
Churches about him rejected, cannot for a moment be sup- 
posed. Had a conflict of this kind existed, the sound of it 
would have reverberated far and wide. — G. P. Pislier : Begin- 
nings of Christianity , pp. 322-5. ^ 

Is the Fourth Gospel Spurious!— The author of the Fourth Gospel 
had a personal love to Jesus. He was not only the disciple 
whom Jesus loved, he was the disciple who loved Jesus. If 
there is any such thing as sincerity in the world, this fact is 
manifest. He loved the Master, as Grotius has said, not simply 
as the Messiah, but with a warm, personal affection, as one 
friend loves another. How did he acquire this love? Does 
not this history give a true answer to the question? Is it 
credible that one who felt this love to Jesus, which must have 
been awakened by a knowledge of His life, that was acquired 
somewhere — is it credible that one thus bound to Jesus by the 
strongest ties of love and reverence, would have deliberately 
set to work to falsify the whole history of His life among men? 
Is it credible that he would have deserted and cast aside the 
evangelical documents, from which, if from anywhere, his love 
to Jesus had been kindled, and have manufactured fictions in 
the room of them? Verily, the skeptical hypothesis makes a 
heavy draught on our credulity. 

Contrasted with Apocryphal Literature. — If the gospel of John 
be spurious, it has no parallel, as we have said before, in the 
apocryphal literature. If we examine the apocryphal Gos- 
pels which are extant, we shall see that they relate to the 
beginning, or to the close, of the Savior’s life. The infancy 
and childhood of Jesus, the character and doings of his 
mother, are chosen as the field for the fantastic and silly tales 
of books like the Protevangelium of James, and the Gospel of 
Thomas. The Acta Pilata, in the various forms in which it is 
found, is an enlargement of the canonical narratives of the 
Savior’s intercourse with the Roman Procurator; while the 
second part of the Gospel of Mcodemus, in its different forms, 
treats of the Descent of Christ into Hades. But there is no 
example of an attempt to traverse the whole ground of the 
evangelical history, to recast that sacred history according to 
a new chronological scheme, and instead of amplifying or deco- 
rating the records of miracles in the canonical Evangelists, to 


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403 


substitute for them narratives entirely new. * * * * 

If the book is spurious, there is involved a refinement in fraud 
without another example in this kind of literature. And then 
the success of the amazing fraud is equally without a parallel. 
The apocryphal Gospels never gained any general currency or 
acknowledgment ; for the Gospel of the Hebrews, which sub- 
stantially corresponded to the canonical Matthew, is hardly to 
be reckoned among them. Gan we believe that the Fourth 
Gospel which, if it be spurious, outstripped them all in audacity 
of invention, found no difficulty in securing a reception at the 
hands of the disciples of the Apostle John, of the Churches of 
Asia, where he had taught, and which at the end of the first 
century we know to have been large and numerous, and of all 
the Churches of the Roman world, so that not a lisp of contra- 
diction or doubt respecting its genuineness is uttered by any 
ecclesiastical writer of the second or third centuries. There 
was a question about the Epistle to the Hebrews, whether it 
was written by Paul, and whether, if written by one of his 
pupils, it ought to be adopted into the canon. There was a 
question about the Second Epistle of Peter, whether it was 
really composed by that apostle. There were some of the 
Churches, apparently, which doubted the apostolic origin of the 
Apocalypse. But this Gospel, so unique in its character, so 
likely to challenge dispute, if its authenticity were not assured 
beyond a peradventure, silently took its place by the side of 
Matthew, Mark and Luke, with none to question its pretensions. 
#*# •###### 

Whoever reads the Fourth Gospel, can judge for himself 
whether the author stood on the low plane of the manufac- 
turers of apocryphal writings, or had a conscience sufficiently 
educated to perceive the really iniquitous character of this 
species of fraud. * * * From whatever 

side we contemplate the problem, it becomes more and more 
manifest, as Neander has said, that this Gospel, if it be not the 
work of the Apostle John, is an insoluble enigma. — G. P. Fisher : 
Beginnings of Christianity, pp. 357-62. 

Peculiarities of John’s Gospel. — As intimated above, if we were 
left to the first three Gospels, we should never reach the idea 
of the Incarnation. The writers of these gospels deal chiefly 
with the human side of Christ’s life. They recognize in J esus 
clearly a power and authority above that of man. They speak 


404 


THE BIBLE. 


of Him as the Son of man, and the Son of God. But they 
nowhere explain His divine Sonship as an incarnation of essen- 
tial Deity. On the contrary, Luke expressly (and the others 
implicitly) grounds it in His miraculous conception. u There- 
fore that holy thing which shall he horn of thee shall he called the 
Son of God .” (Luke i: 35.) Left to the first three Gospels, 
then, we should conclude that Jesus was a divine man, 
a man not only miraculously endowed, as others had been, 
but miraculously conceived and brought into the world. 
In this the fundamental distinction of His nature would rest. 
But the very opening words of the fourth Gospel sound the 
key-note of a yet grander mystery : “In the beginning was the 
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” 
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among men.” Here is 
brought out antecedent existence, and real incarnation. This 
is the fundamental idea of the fourth Gospel, and the writer 
never loses sight of it for a single moment. It rings through 
the history from the majestic prologue to the final sentence. 

Unlike the writers of the other Gospels, who represent our 
Lord as avowing His Messiahship, and divine relations as the 
Son of God, very cautiously, and only after the lapse of time, 
John gives us to understand that, from the very beginning, Jesus 
spoke of Himself as having “ come down from heaven,” and as 
being, at the same time, “ in heaven.” From the start He is 
represented as proclaiming Himself “the only begotten Son of 
God,” come into the world “ that whosoever believeth in Him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (Jno. iii: 13, 16.) 
Always, in John, Jesus is One who has come down from 
heaven. The notion of antecedent existence and incarnation 
at no time falls into the back-ground. From first to last, every- 
thing is consistent with this profound conception. Is it 
because it would have seemed to present a sort of incongruity 
with this majestic character that John says nothing about the 
temptation, which the Synoptists are careful to relate so 
circumstantially ? In any event, it is clear that the mystery of 
the “Word made flesh” gives shape to his entire narrative. — 
G. W. Longan. 

The Beauties and Uses of John’s Gospel.— The gospel of John 
is the gospel of gospels, as the epistle to the Romans is the 
epistle of epistles. It is the most remarkable, as well as the 
most important, literary production ever composed by man. It 


THE BIBLE. 


405 


is a marvel even in the marvelous Book of books. All the 
literature of the world could not replace it. It is the most 
spiritual and ideal of Gospels. It introduces us into the Holy 
of Holies in the history of our Lord; it brings us, as it were, 
into his immediate presence, so that we behold, face to face, 
the true Shekinah, u the glory of the Only Begotten of the 
Father, full of grace and truth.” It presents, in fairest har- 
mony, the highest knowledge, and the deepest love, of Christ. 
It gives us the clearest view of his incarnate divinity and his 
perfect humanity. It sets him forth as the Eternal Word, who 
was the source of life from the beginning, and the organ of all 
the revelations of God to man; as the Fountain of the living 
water that quenches the thirst of the soul ; as the Light of the 
world that illuminates the darkness of sin and error ; as the 
Resurrection and the Life that destroys the terror of death. 
It reflects the lustre of the Transfiguration on the Mount, yet 
subdued by the holy sadness of Gethsemane. It abounds in 
festive joy and gladness over the amazing love of God, but 
mixed with grief over the ingratitude and obtuseness of 
unbelieving men. It breathes the air of peace, and yet sounds 
at times like a peal of thunder from the other world ; it soars 
boldly and majestically like the eagle towards the uncreated 
source of light, and yet hovers as gently as a dove over the 
earth ; it is sublime as a seraph and simple as a child ; high 
and serene as the heaven, deep and unfathomable as the sea. 
It is the plainest in speech and the profoundest in meaning. 
To it more than to any portion of the Scripture applies the 
familiar comparison of a river deep enough for the elephant to 
swim, with shallows for the lamb to wade. It is the gospel of 
love, life and light, the gospel of the heart taken from the heart 
of Christ, on which the beloved disciple leaned at the Last 
Supper. It is the type of the purest forms of mysticism. It 
has an irresistible charm for speculative and contemplative 
minds, and furnishes inexhaustible food for meditation and 
devotion. It is the gospel of peace and Christian union, and a 
prophecy of that blessed future when all the discords of the 
Church militant on earth shall be solved in the harmony of the 
Church triumphant in heaven . — Philip Schaff. 

Schlciermacher Receives John’s Gospel.— John’s Gospel is proved 
to be so by its biographical character and connected unity. It 
recounts dialogues and circumstances which only an eye-witness 


406 


THE BIBLE. 


could possibly have known ; it must be older than the synoptics 
in their present condition, and therefore cannot be based on 
them. Even the supplementary twenty-first chapter, although 
indisputably of later date than the rest, must be assumed to be 
the apostle’s, and generally the narrative has that stamp of 
immediate authority before which suspicion vanishes ; the writer 
must have told the truth ; the highest evidence is the general 
impression of the whole . — Schleiermacher : quoted by Machay in 
his defence of the “Tubingen School and its Antecedents ” p. 121. 

Reflections Upon the Gospels. — The Bible, like the Church, 
gains fresh force and strength in times of trial. As long 
as it is unassailed, it is also in a great measure unstudied. 
It is received as a whole with unquestioning reverence^ 
but the characteristics of its component elements are un- 
distinguished. A vague sense of the general unity of the 
books of which it is composed takes the place of a clear 
view of their organic union. Their independence and variety, 
their vital connection with periods widely separated in time 
and thought, their individual traits and original objects, 
are neglected in that traditional view which sees in all one 
uniform and changeless revelation, neither special in its 
destination nor progressive in its course. These remarks, 
which apply with more or less force to all the books of 
Scripture, are especially applicable to the Gospels. The assaults 
that have been made in late times upon their historic truth have 
brought out with the most striking clearness their separate 
characteristics, and it has even been argued that they were 
composed designedly to further particular views. This exag- 
geration of the truth, though wholly inconsistent with their 
perfect simplicity, is yet a valuable protest against that 
theory which represents them as casual collections of evan- 
gelic fragments, and opens the way to a true appreciation 
of their claims. Together, they bear the same relation 
to the whole apostolic tradition as they bear severally to 
one another. The common record and the separate records 
have a representative value. The three synoptic Gospels are 
not mere 'repetitions of one narrative, but distinct views 
of a complex whole. They are the same, and yet they are 
fresh. The great landmarks of the history are unchanged; 
the same salient points reappear in all, but they are found 
in new combinations and with new details, as the features 


THE BIBLE. 


407 


of a landscape or the outlines of a figure when viewed from 
various points. 

A Distinct Personality in All the Gospel Writers.— Outwardly, 
the Gospels are the reflex of individual impressions. We 
never find, even in the prophets, that the personal character of 
the divine messenger is neutralized ; and much more may we 
expect to find a distinct personality, so to speak, in the writing 
of the Evangelists, whose inspiration was no ecstatic impulse, 
but the consecration of a whole life, the conversion of an 
entire being into a divine agency. For the Gospels, like the 
Gospel, are most divine because they are most human. As the 
clear expression of that which individual men seized and 
treasured up as the image of their Savior’s life, they convey 
to other men the same living picture in the freshness of its 
local coloring. And this coloring is of the essence of the 
picture. The only conception which we can form of the inspi- 
ration of a historic record lies in the divine fitness of the out- 
ward dress in which the facts are at once embodied and veiled. 
FTo record of any fact can be complete. The relations of the 
most trivial occurrence transcend all power of observation; 
and the truthfulness of special details is no pledge of the 
truthfulness of the whole impression. The connection and 
relation and subordination of the various parts, the description 
and suppression of particular incidents, the choice of language 
and style, combine to make a history true or false in its higher 
significance, and belong to that “ poetic ” power which is the 
highest and rarest gift of the historian. This power the 
Evangelists possessed in the fact that they were penetrated 
with the truths of which they spoke. The Spirit which was in 
them searched the deep things of God, and led them to realize 
the mysteries of the faith, not indeed in their infinite essence, 
but as finite conceptions. And would not such writers, above 
all others, compose in an unconscious order ? would not the great 
facts of the Gospel assume in grouping and detail the 
subjective impress of their minds, as they selected and 
arranged them with all truthfulness and divine enlightenment? 
Popular history is universally the truest reflex of popular 
opinion ; and where distortion and embellishment are excluded 
by the multiplicity of the record, the human interest of the 
narrative is one of the most powerful means for the propaga- 
tion of the divine message. The Gospel emphatically speaks 


408 


THE BIBLE 


to men by men, and recognizes their intellectual differences, 
which it converts in different ways to God’s glory. In like 
manner, the Evangelists wrote the story of man’s salvation, 
each as the type of one mighty section of mankind, as they 
personally felt the need of a Savior, and acknowledged His 
power. The truth on which this statement rests lies at the 
very foundation of the Christian faith, for as the Son of God 
was made man for our redemption, so the Spirit of God spoke 
through men for our instruction. 

Their Characteristic Differences. — The contrast between the 
Gospel of St. John and the Synoptic Gospels, both in substance 
and in individual character, is obvious at first sight ; but the 
characteristic differences of the Synoptic Gospels, which are 
formed on the same foundation, and with common materials, are 
less observed. Yet these differences are not less important 
than the former, and belong equally to the complete portraiture 
of the Savior, which comprised the fulness of an outward 
presence, as well as the depth of a secret life. In this respect, 
the records correspond to the subjects. The first record is 
manifold; the second is one; the first is based upon the 
experience of a society, the second on the intuition of a loved 
disciple. Even in date they arise out of distinct periods. 
The Spiritual Gospel belonged to a late stage in the growth of 
the Church; when Christianity was seen clearly to rise above 
the ruins of an “ old world ;” the u fleshy ” Gospels were 
contemporaneous in essence with the origin of the Church itself, 
and were shaped by the providential course of its early history. 
But this natural and social growth, so to speak, invested the 
Synoptic Gospels with a permanent and special power, which 
must continue to work its effects as long as human character 
remains the same. Each narrative, in which the common facts 
are molded, was in this way the spontaneous expression of a 
distinct form of thought, springing out of peculiar circum- 
stances, governed by special laws of combination, destined at 
first to meet the wants of . a marked class, and adapted to 
satisfy in after times the requirements of those who embody 
from time to time, in changing shapes, the feeling by which it 
was first inspired. In whatever view we regard the origin of 
the Gospels, this multiformity appears to be as necessary as it 
was natural. On the one side, the separate aspects of the 
subject and the various elements combined in the early 


THE BIBLE. 


409 


Church ; on the other, the recurrent phases of the human mind, 
which are found in every age, seem to call for some distinct 
recognition, and to suggest the belief that each Gospel may 
fulfill a representative function in the exhibition of the Divine 
Life. Nor can such a belief be dismissed at once as resting on 
mere fanciful analogies, though it is as difficult to express in 
their full force the arguments by which it is supported as it is 
to resolve a general impression into the various elements by 
which it is produced. The proper proof of the fact that each 
Gospel has its distinctive worth springs from personal investi- 
gation ; but such at least was the conviction in which the great 
students of former times applied themselves to the examina- 
tion of the Gospels; and the fuller materials and surer 
criticism which are now the inheritance of the scholar, 
promise proportionately larger results to that labor which is 
most truthful, because it is also most patient and most 
reverent. 

The Fulness of Christ’s Manhood Demands the Variations Given. — 

The subject of the Gospel — the history of the new creation — 
the manifestation of perfect humanity — “the prophetic image 
of the glorified life” — transcends, according to the analogy of 
the earlier Messianic types, the scope of one narrator. The 
first creation was the creation of a harmonious world, the 
second was the reunion of the elements which sin had divided. 
Step by step in the progress of Jewish history, successive fea- 
tures of the coming Savior were embodied in the Law — the 
kingdom, the prophets, the seers; and the record of the 
fulfillment of that to which these all pointed could scarcely 
have been less varied. The twofold nature and complete man- 
hood of Christ seem to require a representation at least as 
distinct as the prophetic teaching of the Law from the visions 
of Daniel. In earlier times patriarchs and kings and prophets 
foreshadowed in their lives fragments of the work of Messiah! 
and so when He came, His work contained implicitly the fulness 
of that which they prefigured. The archetypal life which 
summed up the fragmentary teaching of the past embraced the 
various separate developments of the future. On the one side, 
we see the many forms of the humanity of Christ ; on the other, 
the unchanging imminence of His Godhead. The bearings of 
each act, and the teaching of each discourse, are necessarily 
infinite, for He spoke and acted as the representative of men. 


410 


THE BIBLE. 


Variety in the record is necessary to the completeness of 
the portraiture ; the manifoldness even of the outward type of 
the Lord exceeds the limits of one historic type. The written 
memorial is necessarily partial, and, to borrow the language of 
geometry, superficial ; while the living fact is entire and solid. 
To the simple believer, the whole becomes intelligible by the 
separate contemplation of the parts. And if Christ be our 
pattern, as well as our Redeemer; if we must realize the ful- 
ness of His Manhood for the direction of our energies, as well 
as truthfulness of his Godhead for the assurance of our faith — 
it must be by comparing the distinct outlines of His life, taken 
from the different centers of human thought and feeling ; for it 
is with the spiritual as with the natural vision, the truest 
picture is presented to the mind, not by the absolute coincidence 
of several images, but by the harmonious combination of their 
diversities. — B. F. Westcott : Introduction to the Gospels , pp. 
217-22. 

Peabody’s Position on the Four Gospels.— As to our canonical 
Gospels, there is no vestige of evidence that they were ever 
known in the early time under other names than those of their 
now reputed authors. If the synoptical Gospels were not 
written in the first century, it is certain that there were then 
extant and in circulation books containing most of their narra- 
tives and many of their discourses ; and, as to the fourth Gos- 
pel, it is easy, from the history of Gnosticism, to show that the 
proem could not have been written after the close of the first 
century. The tendency of recent criticism has been to the 
abandonment of the extreme ground occupied at an earlier 
stage of the controversy. Renan, in his last volume, asserts 
the undoubted authorship of the second and third Gospels by 
the very men whose names they bear, and maintains that there 
is a very large J ohannine element in the fourth Gospel, which 
was written, he thinks, after the apostle’s death by his disci- 
ples, and in great part from memory of his teachings. Were 
these books mere chronicles of ordinary events or monuments 
of the literature of their age, we doubt whether their author- 
ship would have been called in question, unless by some such 
erratic as ever and anon denies that Shakspeare can have writ- 
ten “Macbeth” and “Hamlet.” Indeed, the chief reason for the 
later date assigned to them by rationalist critics has been, that 
such a conception as that of the Christ of the Gospels could 


THE BIBLE. 


411 


not have grown out of an ordinary human life, except after an 
interval of two or three generations. The reason is conclusive 
on the hypothesis that the life described was an ordinary human 
life. But it has been found impossible to deny the genuineness 
of the principal epistles of St. Paul, which must have been 
written in the lifetime of most of the Apostles, and which 
show the evangelic conception of the Christ full-grown. 

Question of Authenticity Does Not Rest on Age or Authorship. — 
But the question as to the general authenticity of these books 
by no means rests on their age or authorship. They might be 
thrown aside, they might never have been written, and we 
should still have unimpaired all the proof that we could need 
of the leading facts recorded in them — of the theophany which 
they describe. On the other hand, they might be admitted as 
genuine, and as written with a good purpose, and yet their 
authenticity might remain more than questionable. Did they 
stand alone, were there no traces of their contents in the 
history of their times, they would justly be regarded as pious 
fictions. They did not make or constitute Christianity. They 
were its products. They came into being because the religion 
of which they are exponents was previously in being. They 
seem to have been written, not because their authors had any 
official commission as biographers, but because there was a 
condition of things which created a demand for such writings. 
Luke expressly says this, referring to fragmentary narratives 
previously extant, which it was his purpose to replace by a 
connected story ; and from the earliest tradition we have reason 
to believe that the other Gospels were written simply because 
they were needed arid wanted, that is to say, because there 
existed such a state of religious craving and receptivity as we 
are apt to connect with the faithful reading and diligent use of 
these very books. We, indeed, regard the Gospels of inesti- 
mable worth, as bringing us face to face with Him of whom they 
speak, and under the word-fall of his lips ; but as to the histo- 
rical questions with reference to Christianity, they are tokens 
rather than evidences; effects, not causes; proved authentic 
by their contents, rather than standing out the sole and inde- 
pendent witnesses of those contents. 

Place of Christianity in the World Transcends all Evidence Except 
One. — The place of Christianity in the history of the world 
transcends all evidence except that which the individual 


412 


THE BIBLE. 


Believer derives from its place in liis own heart. It is abso- 
lutely certain that in an age of unexampled moral corruption 
there started into being a body of men, professing and main- 
taining a moral standard not yet transcended, or deemed sus- 
ceptible of being transcended ; and that at an epoch when faith 
was dead in the more intelligent, and superstition almost dead 
in the less intelligent, classes of the civilized world, this same 
body of men presented themselves as a band of earnest and 
devoted religionists, ready to yield up all things earthly, and 
life itself, in attestation of their belief in truths and facts which 
are at this day fervently cherished by thousands upon thou- 
sands. It is equally certain that without resort to other means 
than testimony, reasoning and persuasion, and without conces- 
sion or compromise, these ethical principles and religious beliefs 
were diffused with unprecedented rapidity in all accessible 
countries, and that their diffusion was to a very considerable 
degree among intelligent and cultivated persons, including not 
a few whose social position would have rendered them strongly 
conservative. It is admitted beyond dispute that in an amaz- 
ingly brief period this movement of opinion and principle had 
become revolutionary, had seated upon the throne of universal 
empire the faith nurtured among Galilean fishermen, and had 
driven the established religion into the obscurity which gave 
it its indelible designation as paganism.* It cannot be denied 
that the changes then wrought in human society are the most 
radical changes of which history bears the record, and that 
they constitute at this moment the most influential factor in 
the condition of collective humanity, and in the differences 
between race and race. 

The One Man. — This vast, world-wide, age-long influence can 
be clearly traced to one man, as to whose native estate, nurture, 
surroundings, and exterior biography, there is no essential dis- 
crepancy of tradition or opinion. He was confessedly a 
peasant, without rank, culture or social prestige, unable in his 
lifetime to obtain any but the most humble following, attract- 
ing from persons in office and power, when not utter neglect, 
only scorn and contumely, and in consequence of a brief success 
among the multitude — chiefly of rude provincials — who had 
come to a national festival, condemned to a death ordinarily 


♦Pagan meant remote villages and country. 


THE BIBLE. 


413 


decreed only for a felon slave. It is this man, whose name is the 
most resplendent in the world’s annals, whose influence im- 
measurably exceeds that of the greatest beside, whose era is the 
dividing-line of time, from whose birth-year civilized humanity 
reckons its own new birth to a life that shall last and grow 
while the earth shall stand, whose reputed shame has become 
the standard for all true worth and enduring honor, the emblem 
of whose ignominy surmounts crown, sceptre, tower, and 
palace, as alone giving heavenly consecration to terrestrial 
glory. Who was he ? If he was no more than a son of the 
carpenter of Nazareth, we have not done with miracle. He 
himself was a greater miracle than any recorded of him. His 
posthumous influence, success and fame can be brought into 
line with no other portions of history, have against them the 
most intense antecedent improbability, and can be accounted 
for only by supposing the laws that have else always governed 
human opinion and feeling to have been in this case utterly 
reversed. If we are not prepared to admit this multitudinous 
and permanent miracle of an uncaused moral and religious 
revolution, exceeding in magnitude any effect of like kind 
which has flowed from traceable causes, the alternative is pre- 
sented in our Gospels. Here we see in Jesus Christ a divine 
humanity never beheld on earth before or since; a manifesta- 
tion unique as its influence, which could not but subdue and 
re-create the souls of men; a power and love incarnate, which 
could not but leave in its wake long furrows of living light on 
the surface of all coming ages; a cause fully commensurate 
with the effect realized in the past, portrayed in glowing 
prophecy for the unending future. 

A Thcophany a Necessity. — We, therefore, do not believe Chris- 
tianity to have been a theophany because the Gospels say so ; 
but because we know that there must have been a theoph- 
any in that age, and the evangelists are its historiographers, 
with every external proof that they lived when they might have 
seen it, and with every interior mark of simplicity, honesty and 
candor in their narratives. The books give us the only con- 
ceivable way of accounting for the history of the eighteen 
centuries from whose cradle they sprang. 

In this view, the evidence for what, if true, is the most mo- 
mentous fact in the biography of Christ and the annals of the 
world — his resurrection from the dead — comes out in the strong- 


414 


THE BIBLE. 


est light. That this event was universally believed by Chris- 
tians from St. Paul downward, has ceased to be a matter of 
doubt. Even Baur and Renan expressly say that the surviving 
loyalty and zeal of the apostles, and the labors and sacrifices of 
the earlier disciples, can be accounted for only on the ground 
of a settled and immovable conviction that Jesus had really 
risen. Had such an event been related in the Gospels, and we 
yet found outside them no token of its influence on conduct 
and character ; if, for aught that we could see to the contrary, 
the apostles had lived on as under the blighting and desolating 
shadow of the cross, as the disappointed disciples of a master 
slain in disgrace and hopelessly dead, we should be constrained 
to account the narrative, though genuine, as an allegory or a 
fiction. But when we find the life-pulse of the risen Savior 
throbbing through the Roman Empire almost simultaneously 
with the tidings of his death ; when we see his bereaved fol- 
lowers gladdened, inspired, empowered, as they had never been 
while He whom they had so dearly loved was with them ; when 
we hear them proclaiming him alive — and believed by thousands 
— in the very city without whose gates he had died, — we then 
turn to the Gospels, and have the whole mystery of their con- 
fident, jubilant faith made clear. We learn that they had 
abundant reason for their undoubting assurance, in that their 
risen Lord had talked with them, together and one by one, by 
day as by night ; had eaten with them and blessed their bread, 
had given them minute instructions as to their future ministry, 
and had passed from earth to heaven in their sight. All this 
we believe, not because it is so written, but because, had it not 
been, the history of the Church had been unwritten. 

Genuineness of the Gospels Impregnable. — We have not adduced 
this line of argument because we regard the evidence of the 
genuineness of the Gospels as less than impregnable. On the 
other hand, after having read almost everything that has been 
written for the last fifty years in disproof of their authorship by 
apostles and apostolic men, we see less reason for denying it than 
there is for maintaining that Virgil did not write the iEneid nor 
Cicero the De Officiis. But were the case otherwise, — were it 
proved that the earliest of the Gospels was not written till the 
middle of the second century or the middle of the tenth, our 
belief in the substantial authenticity of their contents would be 
unchanged, so indubitably certain is it that a personage such 


THE BIBLE. 


415 


as they describe lived and died in Judea, and events such as 
they relate occurred there, in the reigns of Augustus and Tibe- 
rius. Nay, if our gospels did not exist in their present form till a 
hundred and twenty years or more after the death of Christ, 
there can be not the slightest doubt that records of like con- 
tents existed at a much earlier period; for Justin Martyr, at a 
time when it is pretended that our Gospels had not yet seen 
the light, cites from what he calls “Memoirs of the Apostles” 
nearly all the events and many of the discourses contained in 
our first three Gospels, with no greater verbal divergence from 
their text than was to be expected if he were quoting them from 
memory. Moreover, as to the fourth Gospel, there are several 
narratives — as, for instance, that of the raising of Lazarus, 
and some of the scenes between Christ’s resurrection and his 
ascension — so manifestly bearing the marks of personal partici- 
pation and remembrance, that, if not written by an eye-witness, 
they must have been copied, almost word for word, from the 
intensely vivid narrative of an eye-witness. For these reasons 
we think that an undue stress has been laid on both sides upon 
the date of the Gospels, and would be entirely willing to join 
issue with the adverse party as to the truth of these books, on 
their own ground as to their authorship. —Prof. A. P. Peabody , 
of Harvard College : Princeton Review, May, 1878. 

Credibility Argument Rises to a Climax. — All the separate cir- 
cumstances which confer credibility upon any one document, 
even though it stands alone and unsupported by any other, 
combine themselves into a much stronger body of evidence 
when we have obtained the concurrence of several. If even 
in the case of a single narrative, a probability lies on the side 
of its being true, from the multitude and diffusion of copies, 
and from the air of truth and honesty discernible in the com- 
position itself, the probability is heightened by the coincidence 
of several narratives, all of them possessing the same claims 
upon our belief. If it be improbable that one should be writ- 
ten for the purpose of imposing a falsehood upon the world, it 
is still more improbable that many should be written, all of 
them, conspiring to the same perverse and unnatural object. 
No one can doubt, at least, that of the multitude of written testi- 
monies which have come down to us, the true must greatly 
preponderate over the false ; and that the deceitful principle, 
though it exists sometimes, could never operate to such an 


416 


THE BIBLE. 


extent, as to carry any great or general imposition in the face 
of all the documents which are before us. The supposition must 
be extended much farther than we have yet carried it, before 
we reach the degree of evidence and of testimony, of which, 
on many points of ancient history, we are at this moment in 
actual possession. Many documents have been collected pro- 
fessing to be written at different times, and by men of different 
countries. In this way a great body of ancient literature has 
been formed, from which we can collect many points of evidence 
too tedious to enumerate. Do we find the express concurrence 
of several authors to the same piece of history? Do we find, 
what is still more impressive, events formally announced in one 
narrative, not told over again, but implied and proceeded upon 
as true in another ? Do we find the succession of history, 
through a series of ages, supported in a way that is natural 
and consistent? Do we find those compositions which profess 
a higher antiquity, appealed to by those which profess a lower ? 
These, and a number of other points, which meet every scholar 
who betakes himself to the actual investigation, give a most 
warm and living character of reality to the history of past times. 

A Perversity of Mind. — There is a perversity of mind which 
may resist all this. There is no end to the fancies of skepti- 
cism. We may plead, in vain, the number of written testimonies, 
their artless coincidence, and the perfect undesignedness of 
manner by which they often supply the circumstances that 
serve both to guide and satisfy the inquirer, and to throw light 
and support upon one another. The infidel will still have 
something behind which he can entrench himself ; and his last 
supposition, monstrous and unnatural as it is, may be, 
that the whole of written history is a laborious fabrication, 
sustained for many ages, and concurred in by many individuals, 
with no other purpose than to enjoy the anticipated blunders 
of the men of future times, whom they had combined with so 
much dexterity to bewilder and lead astray. — Chalmers' 
Evidences. 

Facts that Convince Hackett Regarding Acts.— The history which 
we read in the Acts connects itself at numerous points with 
the social customs of different and distant nations ; with the 
fluctuating civil affairs of the Jews, Greeks and Romans ; and 
with geographical or political divisions and arrangements, 
which were constantly undergoing some change or modifica- 


THE BIBLE. 


417 


tion. Through all these circumstances, which underlie Luke’s 
narrative from commencement to end, he pursues his way 
without a single instance of contradiction or collision. Exam- 
ples of the most unstudied harmony with the complicated 
relations of the times present themselves at every step. No 
writer who was conscious of fabricating his story would have 
hazarded such a number of minute allusions, since they 
increased so immensely the risk of detection ; and still less, if 
he had ventured upon it, could he have introduced them so 
skilfully as to baffle every attempt to discover a single well- 
founded instance of ignorance or oversight. * * * * 

It is no exaggeration to say, that the well-informed reader, who 
will study carefully the book of the Acts, and compare the 
incidental notices to be found on almost every page with the 
geography and the political history of the times, and with the 
customs of the different countries in which the scene of the 
transactions is laid, will receive an impression of the writer’s 
fidelity and accuracy, equal to that of the most forcible 
treatises on the truth of Christianity. — Hackett’s Commentary 
on Acts, p. 18. 

Farrar Dissents from Baur. — Since Baur wrote his “ Paulus,” 
and Zeller his “Apostelgeschichte,” it has become impossible 
to make use of the Acts of the Apostles, and the thirteen 
Epistles commonly attributed to St. Paul, without some justifica- 
tion of the grounds upon which their genuineness is established. 
To do this exhaustively would require a separate volume, and 
the work has been already done, and is being done by abler 
hands than mine. All that is here necessary is to say that I 
should, in no instance, make use of any statement in those 
Epistles of which the genuineness can still be regarded as 
fairly disputable, if I did not hope to state some of the reasons 
which appear sufficient to justify my doing so ; and that if many 
cases the genuineness or proper superscription of any Epistle, 
or part of an Epistle, seems to me to be a matter of uncertainty, 
I shall feel no hesitation in expressing such an opinion. Of 
the Acts of the Apostles I shall have various opportunities to 
speak incidentally, and, without entering on any separate 
defence of the book against the assaults of modern critics, I 
will at present only express my conviction that, even if we 
admit that it was “ an ancient Eirenicon,” intended to check the 
strife of parties by showing that there had been no irrecon- 

Al 


418 


THE BIBLE. 


cilable opposition between the views and ordinances of St. 
Peter and St. Paul ; even if we concede the obvious principle 
that whenever there appears to be any contradiction between 
the Acts and the Epistles, the authority of the latter must be 
considered paramount ; nay, even if we acknowledge that sub- 
jective and artificial considerations may have had some 
influence in the form and construction of the book ; yet the 
Acts of the Apostles is in all its main outlines a genuine and 
trustworthy history. Let it be granted that in the Acts we 
have a picture of essential unity between the followers of the 
Judaic and the Pauline schools of thought, which we might 
conjecture from the Epistles to have been less harmonious and 
undisturbed ; let it be granted that in the acts we more than 
once see Paul acting in a way which from the Epistles we 
should a priori have deemed unlikely. Even these concessions 
are fairly disputable ; yet, in granting them, we only say what is 
in itself sufficiently obvious, that both records are confessedly 
fragmentary. 

Book of Acts Necessarily Fragmentary.— They are fragmentary, 
of course, because neither of them even profess to give us any 
continuous narrative of the Apostle’s life. That life is — roughly 
speaking — only known to us at intervals during its central and 
later period, between the years A. D. 36 and A. D. 66. It is 
like a manuscript of which the beginning and the end are irre- 
coverably lost. It is like one of those rivers which spring 
from unknown sources, and sink into the ground before they 
have reached the sea. But more than this, how incomplete is 
our knowledge, even of that portion of which these records and 
notices remain ! Of this fact we can have no more overwhelming 
proof than we may derive from reading that “ Iliad of woes,” 
the famous passage of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 
where, driven against his will by the calumnies of his enemies to 
an appearance of boastfulness of which the very notion was 
abhorrent to him, he is forced to write a summary sketch of 
what he had done and suffered. That enumeration is given 
long before the end of his career, and yet of the specific out- 
rages and dangers there mentioned no less than eleven are not 
once alluded to in the Acts, though many others are there 
mentioned, which were subsequent to that sad enumeration. 
Not one, for instance, of the five scourgings with Jewish thongs 
is referred to by St. Luke ; one only of the three beatings with 


THE BIBLE. 


419 


Roman rods ; not one of the three shipwrecks, though a later 
one is so elaborately detailed; no allusion to the night and day 
in the deep ; two only of what St. Clement tells us were seven 
imprisonments. There are even whole classes of perils to 
which the writer of the Acts, though he was certainly at one 
time a companion of St. Paul, makes no allusion whatever — as, 
for instance, the perils of rivers, the perils of robbers, the 
perils in the wilderness, the perils among false brethren, the 
hunger, the thirst, the fasting, the cold, the nakedness. And 
these, which are thus passed over without notice in the Acts, 
are in the Epistles mentioned only cursorily, so generally, so 
unchronologically, that scarcely one of them can be dwelt 
upon and assigned with certainty to its due order of succession 
in St. Paul’s biography.. If this, then, is the case, who can 
pretend that in such a life there is not room for a series of 
events and actions — even for an exhibition of phases of char- 
acter — in the narrative, which neither did nor could find place 
in the letters ; and for events and features of character in the 
letters which find no reflection in the narrative ? * * * * 

It is, then, idle to assume that either of our sources must be 
rejected as untrustworthy, because it presents us with fresh 
aspects of a myriad-sided character — F. W. Farrar : Life and 
Work of St. Paul , Chap. 1. 

Christianity According to the Tubingen School. — According to 
Baur, the true kernel of Christianity appears in all those 
points on which Jesus insisted when he appeared as the 
Reformer of the Jewish religion. The pure elements of this 
religion formed the motive principle of His religious work. 
He did not come to destroy, but to fulfill; and the law was ful- 
filled by Him, inasmuch as He recurred from the merely 
outward ceremonial service to the internal disposition. The 
tendency of the most important of Christ’ s didactic discourses 
was to refer man back to himself, to call his attention to all 
that may be learned from the wants of his moral nature. “All 
that belongs to the truly moral purport of Christ’s teachings, 
as contained in the Sermon an the Mount, the parables, etc. — 
his doctrine as to the Kingdom of God, the conditions of its 
membership whereby man is placed in a truly moral relation to 
God ; — all this constitutes the intrinsic essence of Christianity 
and its substantial center.” ( Die Tubingen Schule, p. 30. J In 
those didactic discourses we find a system of religious truth 


420 


THE BIBLE. 


which imparts to Christianity the character of the purest 
rational religion. u What should there be supernatural in the 
fact that the external verities of reason were once pronounced 
in such a way that they only needed to be pronounced in order 
to ensure their universal acknowledgment"? ” True, even the 
most rational verities of religion will not meet with general 
acceptance if they are not supported by the weight of a great 
personality. But there is every reason to believe that Jesus 
was just such an extraordinary personality, intellectually gifted 
in the highest degree, and morally grand. That, however, which 
gives his person the highest, its absolute significance, is only 
that in Him u first this free conception of the relation between 
God and man was cleared from all impurity, entered into the 
living consciousness of man, and found there its truest and 
most immediate expression.” ( Die Tubingen Schule.J 

In the miracles of Christ, and in the form that they have 
taken in tradition, we can only see an effect of the wonderful 
influence of Christ upon His contemporaries. No sooner 
had He made himself conspicuous than men saw in Him the 
long-expected Saviour. The question is, whether Jesus was at 
once firmly convinced of His Messianic mission, or whether this 
idea only gradually gained ground in Him. We shall presently 
see that Baur does not sufficiently explain to us how Jesus 
came to declare Himself to be the Messiah. Decidedly as He 
asserted the conviction of His Messianic mission, He was 
exceedingly reserved as to the political expectations of His 
people, and held entirely aloof from them, for He only fished 
to work by a spiritual reformation. Early in His career He 
had become convinced that the sacrifice of His life was 
necessary to the realization of His idea. After a lengthy stay 
in Galilee He went to Jerusalem, in order to bring about the 
crisis which ended in His death. The heads ofi His nation 
condemned Him, under the influence of the correct presenti- 
ment that he had brought on the end of the old faith. His 
death cut off the last possibility of identifying the Messiah, 
whom He claimed to be, with the Jewish Messiah, who was 
to have erected another kingdom of David. Not until then 
did the Messianic idea which He had enunciated stand forth in 
all its purity, and now it could not but become the principle of 
a new religion different from Judaism; Christianity, therefore, 
gained its world-wide importance through the death of Jesus. 


THE BIBLE. 


421 


His resurrection is merely the declaration, put in the form of a 
fact, that His person not only did not perish, but was even 
raised by death to the dignity which pertained to Him as being 
the living exponent of the new spiritual religion. “What the 
resurrection of itself is,’ 7 says Baur, with peculiar caution, “ it 
does not lie within the province of historical research to 
determine (Die Tubingen Schule, p. 453). The conviction that 
His resurrection was an absolute necessity forced itself upon 
the disciples, and for their consciousness it was a firm fact. 
Church history, therefore, has for its starting-point, not the 
objective fact of the resurrection, but the belief of the disciples 
in it. This belief was the commencement of the Christian 
Church. — Ghristlieb : Modern Doubt , pp. 512-14. 

Why Baur and His School Discriminate between Peter and Paul, 
Etc. — The Jewish-Christian party was predominant as far 
down as the beginning of the second century ; but before 
this another more free and universalist school had separated 
from it, chiefly through the teaching and work of the 
Apostle Paul. This body held Christianity to be the universal 
religion, released itself from the bondage of the law, 
and directed itself chiefly to the heathen. Hence, it gradu- 
ally became the more numerous, and later on the dominant 
party. Amongst its members a higher conception of Christ, 
of His pre-existence, His unity with the Father, His God- 
head, was gradually developed during the course of the second 
century. 

The chief representatives of the former party are St. Peter 
and St. James ; that of the latter, St. Paul. According to 
Baur, the entire history of primitive Christianity is ruled by 
this opposition between Petrinism and Paulinism, or between 
Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. There are traces of it 
in the Hew Testament. In Gal. ii, we read of a dispute between 
St. Peter and St. Paul as to the relative positions of the Jewish 
and Gentile Christians. In 1 Cor. i, we read of parties 
in the Corinthian Church who called themselves by the names 
of Paul, Apollos, Kephas, and Christ. In the epistle of St. 
James we find a legal Jew setting up works as against mere 
faith. In course of time, however, men sought to mediate 
between these two opposites, and to reconcile them. All the 
books of the Hew Testament owe their origin either to one or 
other of these parties, or to an attempt at mediation between 


422 


THE BIBLE. 


them. What follows ? * * * * First,- That the 

books in which we find the doctrine of the Godhead of Christ 
already developed cannot have been composed till the second 
century. For the apostolic Church, and even St. Paul, had no 
such high conception of Christ. And second, that only those 
writings which distinctly express that opposition, i . e ., which are 
either decisively Petrine or entirely Pauline, can be genuine ; 
whereas, those in which the edge of this opposition is already 
blunted, and which are evidently trying to mediate between the 
two tendencies, must belong to that later age in which men 
were working at the reconciliation of both parties. — Christlieb: 
Modern Doubt , p. 515. 

Luke’s Gifts as the Historian of the Acts.— There are works 
which are done with so natural and graceful a facility, that 
it seems to the superficial observer as if any one could have 
done them, or as if he who did them was only guided by casual 
impulse, while a more careful student will perceive that singu- 
lar gifts were necessary to produce the results which seem so 
easy, and that a comprehensive design and an accurate judg- 
ment presided over arrangements which appear fortuitous. 
Such a work is the Acts of the Apostles. In a narrative all 
alive with graphic details, and written in a style of animated 
simplicity and natural ease, it carries us through a period of 
human history of incalculable interest and importance ; one in 
which the effects of the manifestation of the Son of God were 
developed and tested ; in which the life which he had intro- 
duced among men disclosed its nature and power, and the truth 
which he had left commenced its struggles and conquests ; in 
which the Christian Church was constituted, gradually detached 
from its Jewish integuments, and brought to the consciousness 
of its freedom and catholicity; in which it verified its creden- 
tials, proved its arms, recognized its destinies, and commenced 
its victories ; in which impulses were given which would never 
cease to vibrate and precedents were established to which 
distant ages would refer ; in which solemn and exciting scenes, 
marvels and miracles, saintly and heroic characters, their 
labors, their conflicts, their sufferings, their journeyings, their 
collisions with all classes of men, seem to force upon the his- 
torian a confusing multiplicity of materials. Yet through all 
this he makes his way straight in one direction, as a man guided 
by that instinct of selection which belongs to the ruling pres- 


THE BIBLE. 


423 


ence of a definite purpose. * * * * We cannot 

for a moment suppose that his acquaintance with the “ Acts of 
the Apostles ” was limited to the facts recorded in the book ; 
that he knew nothing of the proceedings of John or James, or 
of the manifold movements and events which were going on 
by the side of those which he has related. * * * * 

There is, indeed, no reason given why one speech is reported 
and one event related at length, in preference to others which 
are passed over or slightly touched ; yet, when we reach the con- 
clusion, we see the reasons in the result. We find that by an 
undeviating course we have followed the development of the 
true idea of the Church of Christ, in its relations first to the 
Jewish system, out of which it emerges, and then to the great 
world, to which it opens itself. — Bernard’ s Progress of Doctrine 
in the New Testament, pp. 127-9. 

Teaching of the Book of Acts. — We do not live under the law 
of Moses, or the personal ministry of Jesus, but under the 
ministry of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, just previous to his ascen- 
sion, committed the affairs of His kingdom on earth into the 
hands of twelve men, to bfc guided by the Holy Spirit, who 
descended shortly after he ascended ; and now all that we can 
know of present terms of pardon must be learned through 
the teaching and example of these men. If, then, the 
conditions of pardon under any preceding dispensation be 
found to differ from those propounded in Acts, in all the 
points of difference the latter, and not the former, must be our 
guide. These are the last, and certainly the most elaborately 
detailed communications of the Divine will upon the subject, 
and belong peculiarly to the new covenant under which we 
live. If God has made them to differ, in any respect, from 
those under the old covenant, he teaches us, by this very 
difference, that he has thus far set aside the old through 
preference for the new. — Prof.J. W. Me Garvey. 

The New Testament as a Unit. — Had the pieces which make 
up the New Testament been the only documents of past times, 
the mere existence of a pretension to such an age, and to such 
an author, resting on their own information, would have been 
sustained as a certain degree of evidence, that the real age and 
the real author had been assigned to them. But we have the 
testimony of subsequent authors to the same effect ; and it is 
to be remarked, that it is by far the most crowded, and the 


424 


THE BIBLE. 


most closely sustained series of testimonies of which we have 
any example in the whole field of ancient history. When we 
assigned the testimony of Celsus, it is not to be supposed that 
this is the very first which occurs after the days of the apostles. 
The blank of a hundred years betwixt the publication of the 
original story and the publication of Gelsus, is filled up by 
antecedent testimonies, which, in all fairness, should be counted 
more decisive of the point in question. They are the testimo- 
nies of Christian writers, and, in as far as a nearer opportunity of 
obtaining correct information is concerned, they should be held 
more valuable than the testimony of Celsus. These references 
are of three kinds : First , In some cases, their reference to the 
books of the New Testament is made in the form of an express 
quotation, and the author particularly named. Secondly , In 
other cases, the quotation is made without reference to the 
particular author, and ushered in by the general words, “as it is 
written.” And, Thirdly , There are innumerable allusions to the 
different parts of the New Testament, scattered over all the 
writings of the earlier fathers. In this last case there is no ex- 
press citation ; but we have the sentiment, the turn of expres- 
sion, the very words of the New Testament, repeated so often, 
and by such a number of different writers as to leave no doubt 
upon the mind that they were copied from one common original, 
which was at that period held in high reverence and estimation. 
In pursuing the train of references, we do not meet with a 
single chasm from the days of the original writers. Not to 
repeat what we have already made some allusion to, the testimo- 
nies of the original writers to one another, we proceed to assert, 
that some of the fathers whose writings have come down to us, 
were the companions of the apostles, and are even named in 
the books of the New Testament. St. Clement, Bishop of 
Borne, is, with the concurrence of all ancient authors, the same 
whom Paul mentions in his epistle to the Philippians. In his 
epistle to the Church of Corinth, which was written in the name 
of the whole Church of Borne, he refers to the first epistle 
of Paul to the former Church. “Take into your hands the 
epistle of the blessed Paul the apostle.” He then makes a 
quotation, which is to be found in Paul’s first epistle to the 
Corinthians. Could Clement have done this to the Corinthians 
themselves, had no such epistle been in existence f And is not 
this an undoubted testimony, not merely from the mouth of 


THE BIBLE. 


425 


Clement, but on the part of the Churches both of Kome and 
Corinth, to the authenticity of such an epistle J There are in 
this same epistle of Clement several quotations of the second 
kind, which confirm the existence of some other books of the 
New Testament; and a multitude of allusions or references of 
the third kind, to the writings of the evangelists, the Acts of the 
Apostles, and a great many of those epistles which have been 
admitted into the New Testament. 

How to Estimate the Value of Testimony. — We have similar 
testimonies from some more of the fathers, who lived and con- 
versed with Jesus Christ. Besides many references of the 
the second and third kind, we have also other instances of the 
same kind of testimony which Clement gave to St. Paul’s first 
Epistle to the Corinthians, than which nothing can be conceived 
more indisputable. Ignatius, writing to the Church of Ephesus, 
takes notice of St. PauPs epistle to that Church ; and Polycarp, 
an immediate disciple of the apostles, makes the same express 
reference to St. PauPs epistle to the Philippians in a letter 
addressed to the people. In carrying our attention down 
from the apostolical fathers, we follow an uninterrupted series 
of testimonies to the authenticity of the canonical scriptures. 
They get more numerous and circumstantial as we proceed — a 
thing to be expected from the progress of Christianity, and the 
greater multitude of writers, who came forward in its defence 
and illustration. 

In pursuing the series of writers from the days of the apos- 
tles down to about 150 years after the publication of the pieces 
which make up the New Testament, we come to Tertullian, of 
whom Lardner says, “that there are perhaps more and longer 
quotations of the small volume of the New Testament in this 
one Christian author, than of all the works of Cicero, though 
of so uncommon excellence for thought and style, in the writers 
of all characters for several ages.” 

We feel ourselves exposed, in this part of our investigation, 
to the suspicion which adheres to every Christian testimony. 
We have already made some attempts to analyze that suspicion 
into its ingredients, and we conceive, that the circumstance of 
the Christians being an interested party, is only one, and not 
perhaps the principal of these ingredients. At all events, this 
may be the proper place for disposing of that one ingredient, 
and for offering a few general observations on the strength of 
the Christian testimony. 


426 


THE BIBLE. 


In estimating the value of any testimony, there are two 
distinct objects of consideration ; the person who gives the 
testimony, and the people to whom the testimony is addressed. 
It is quite needless to enlarge on the resources which, in the 
present instance, we derive from both these considerations, 
and how much each of them contributes to the triumph and 
solidity of the Christian argument. In as far as the people who 
give the testimony are concerned, how could they be mistaken 
in their account of the New Testament, when some of them 
lived in the same age with the original writers, and were their 
intimate acquaintances, and when all of them had the benefit 
of an uncontrolled series of evidence, reaching down from 
the date of the earliest publications to their own times ? Or? 
how can we suspect that they falsified, when there runs through 
their writings the same tone of plainness and sincerity, which 
is allowed to stamp the character of authenticity on other 
productions ; and, above all, when upon the strength of heathen 
testimony, we conclude, that many of them, by their sufferings 
and death, gave the highest evidence that man can give, of his 
speaking under the influence of a real and honest conviction ? In 
as far as the people who received the testimony are concerned, 
to what other circumstances can we ascribe their concurrence, 
but to the truth of that testimony ? In what way was it possible 
to deceive them upon a point of general notoriety ? The books 
of the New Testament are referred to by the ancient fathers, 
as writings generally known and respected by the Christians 
of that period. If they were obscure writings, or had no 
existence at the time, how can we account for the credit and 
authority of those fathers who appealed to them, and had the 
effrontery to insult their fellow-Christians by a falsehood so 
palpable, and so easily detected ? Allow them to be capable of 
this treachery, we have still to explain, how the people came to 
be the dupes of so glaring an imposition ; how they could be 
permitted to give up everything for a religion, whose teachers 
were so unprincipled as to deceive them, and so unwise as to 
commit themselves upon ground where it was impossible to 
elude discovery. Could Clement have dared to refer the 
people of Corinth to an epistle said to be received by them- 
selves, and which had no existence ? or, could he have referred 
the Christians at large to writings which they never heard of? 
And it was not enough to maintain the semblance of truth 


THE BIBLE. 


427 


with the people of their own party. Where were the Jews all 
the time? and how was it possible to escape the correction of 
these keen and vigilant observers? We mistake the matter 
much, if we think that Christianity at that time was making its 
insidious way in silence and in secrecy, through a listless and 
an unconcerned public. All history gives an opposite 
representation. The passions and curiosity of men were quite 
upon the alert. The popular enthusiasm had been excited on 
both sides of the question. It had drawn the attention of the 
established authorities in different provinces of the empire, 
and the merits of the Christian cause had become a matter of 
frequent and moral discussion in courts of judicature. If, in 
these circumstances, the Christian writers had the hardihood to 
venture upon a falsehood, it would have been upon safer ground 
than what they naturally adopted. They never would have 
hazarded to assert what was so open to contradiction, as the 
existence of books held in reverence among all the Churches, 
and which yet nobody, either in or out of these Churches, ever 
heard of. They would never have been so unwise as to commit 
in this way a cause, which had not a single circumstance to 
recommend it but its truth and its evidences. 

The falsehood of the Christian testimony on this point 
carries along with it a concurrence of circumstances, each of 
which is the strangest and most unprecedented that ever was 
heard of. — Chalmers’ Evidences : Vol. 2, pp. 426-8. 

George Campbell’s Idea of Evangelist’s Character.— Moses and the 
other writers of the Old Testament Scriptures were all prophets, 
a character with which, considered in a religious light, no 
merely human character can be compared. None, therefore, 
could be better authorized than they to pronounce directly on 
the quality both of the agents and of the actions mentioned in 
their histories. In this view of the matter they had no supe- 
rior, even in the most eminent personages whose lives they 
recorded. An unreserved plainness of censure or approbation 
was, in them, therefore, becoming, as it entirely suited the 
authority with which they were vested. JBut was not the situ- 
ation of the evangelists, it may be asked, the same in this 
respect, as they also wrote by inspiration ? It is true they were 
inspired, and at least equally entitled to the prophetical char- 
acter with any who preceded them ; but they were not entirely 
in the same situation. In the Old Testament, the sacred pen- 


428 


THE BIBLE. 


men were the mouth of God to the people. In the Gospels, 
the writers appear solely as Christ’s humble attendants, 
selected for introducing to the knowledge of others this infi- 
nitely higher character, who is, himself, in a supereminent sense, 
the mouth, the oracle of God. It is this subordinate part of 
ushers which they professedly act. Like people struck with 
the ineffable dignity of the Messiah whom they serve, they 
lose no opportunity of exhibiting him to the world, appearing 
to consider the introduction of their own opinion as an imper- 
tinence . — George Campbell: Four Gospels. 

An Appeal for Fair Play. — I need scarcely inform this intel- 
ligent audience, that the volume called the New Testa- 
ment is the production of eight different authors or 
writers — that it contains many different treatises in the 
form of Narratives and Epistles, written in different 
parts of the world, and at sundry intervals, and after- 
ward collected into one volume. These eight writers are: 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James and Jude. 
Pour of them wrote Memoirs or Narratives of Jesus Christ; 
and four of them wrote letters to different congregations and 
individuals, in Asia and Europe. 

Each of these pieces was deemed by the writer perfectly 
sufficient to accomplish the object which he designed 
by it. But when all is collected into one volume, cor- 
roborating and illustrating each other, how irresistible 
the evidence, and how brilliant the light, which they dis- 
play! To him who contemplates the New Testament as the 
work of one individual, all written at one time and published 
in one country ; and to him who views it as the work of eight 
authors, written in different parts of the world, and at intervals 
in the extremes more than half a century apart, how different 
the amount of evidence, intrinsic and extrinsic, which it pre- 
sents! The writers themselves, though all Jews, born in 
different provinces of the Roman empire, having each a pro- 
vincial dialect, a peculiarity of style, and some of them of 
different ranks and avocations of life, give great variety to the 
style, and weight to the authority of this small volume. They 
are eight witnesses, who depose not only to the original facts 
on which Christianity is based, but to a thousand incidents 
which directly or indirectly bear upon the pretensions of the 
Founder of this religion ; and from the variety of information, 


THE BIBLE. 


429 


allusion, description, and reference to persons, places and 
events, which they present to us, they subject themselves not 
only to cross-examination among themselves, but to be com- 
pared and tried by cotemporary historians, geographers, politi- 
cians, statesmen and orators ; in fact, they bring themselves in 
contact with all the public documents of the age in which they 
lived and wrote. But of this hereafter in detail. 

But to approach the position to be proved still more closely. 
This volume purports to be the writings of these eight persons, 
and has been transmitted from generation to generation as 
such. We ascend the stream up to its fountain. We find it 
ascribed to them in the last century. Millions believed it. In 
the century preceding that, millions believed it: and so on, till 
we come up very nigh the times in which the works were written. 
What would, let me ask — what would be the quality and 
amount of evidence necessary to establish the fact of author- 
ship of any other work of antiquity? We claim no favors. 
We ask for no peculiar process, no new or untried form of ex- 
amination. We will constitute no new court of inquiry. We 
will submit the question of authorship to be tried by all the 
canons, or regulations, or rules, which the literary world, which 
the most rigid critics, have instituted or appealed to, in settling 
any literary question of this sort. Let me, then, ask — in such 
a court, would the fact of these writings having been universally 
received by all the primitive Christians, as the works of their 
reputed authors, be admitted as sufficient proof? Would the 
fact of these writings having been quoted as the genuine works 
of their reputed authors, by the earliest Christian writers, 
by the cotemporaries and immediate successors of the 
original witnesses, be admitted as proof? Would the testimony 
of neutrals, would the testimony of apostates, would the testi- 
mony of the first opponents of the Christian religion, be admit- 
ted as proof? Would the concurrent and combined testimony 
of all these be admitted, to prove the mere question of author- 
ship ? Most unquestionably these embrace all the proofs which 
human reason can require, and all which the archives of human 
learning can furnish, in proof of the authorship of any literary 
work in the world. Yes, manifold more than ever has been 
called for, and much more than can be adduced, to prove the 
authorship of any work of the same antiquity. The poems of 
Yirgil and Horace, the annals of Tacitus, the orations of Cicero, 


430 


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the most popular works of antiquity, cannot afford half the 
proofs that they are the genuine works of the persons whose 
names they bear, as can be adduced to prove the authorship 
of the Memoirs of Jesus Christ, written by Matthew, Mark, 
Luke and John. 

Although we might not be able to summon into one and the 
same court all the friends and all the enemies of Christianity, 
who wrote something upon the subject in the Apostolic and in 
the succeeding age, to attest that all the writings now ascribed 
to those eight authors were actually written by them ; yet we 
do, in effect, the same, by hearing them in piecemeal or in detail. 
For example : it is, to quote the words of Dr. Chalmers, “the 
unexcepted testimony of all subsequent writers, that two of 
the Gospels and several of the Epistles were written by the 
immediate disciples of the Savior, and published in their life- 
time.” Even Celsus, an enemy of the Christian faith, and the 
first Gentile writer who publicly opposes Christianity, admits 
this, or refers to the affairs of Jesus as written by his disciples. 
From the extracts which he makes in his book, there can be no 
doubt but that he refers to one or other of the four Gospels. 
He wrote about one hundred years after the first publication 
of the Narrative. “He takes it up upon the strength of its 
general notoriety, and the whole history of that period furnish- 
es nothing that can attach any doubt or suspicion to this circum- 
stance. The distinct assertion of Celsus, being an enemy to 
Christianity, that the pieces in question were written by the 
companions of Jesus, though even at the distance of a hundred 
years, is an argument in favor of their authenticity, which 
cannot be alleged for many of the most esteemed compositions 
of antiquity.” — A. Campbell : Evidences, pp. 266-7. 

Some Internal Evidence of Authenticity.— The question now 
before us, is : Does the character of these writers, as it pre- 
sents itself to our view, from their own writings, or from any 
records which have come down to us, afford any ground to 
suspect either their sincerity, or any moral defect whatever ? 
There is a species of evidence, sometimes called the internal 
evidence of Christianity. This is made up from the character of 
the writers, the particulars of style and sentiment exhibited, 
and also from the nature, object, and tendency of the doctrine 
taught, or the communications made. There is what is some- 
times called the critical internal evidence, and the moral internal 


THE BIBLE. 


431 


evidence. I am not, however, going into this matter at present. 

I only remark, that, although the internal evidence, found 
within the volume, is not supposed the best calculated to arrest 
the attention of the bold, declaiming infidel, or the curious 
speculating skeptic ; yet this is the evidence which ever has 
made the deepest impression upon the mind of the honest 
inquirer, and affords a much greater assurance to the believer 
of the certainty of the foundation of his faith, than all the 
external proofs which have ever been adduced. The moral 
internal evidence of Christianity, is that which takes hold of 
the great mass of mankind, because it seizes the soul of man; 
it adapts itself to the whole man. It speaks to the under- 
standing, to the conscience, to the affections, to the passions, 
to the circumstances, of man, in a way which needs no trans- 
lation, no comment. It pierces the soul of man, dividing even 
the animal life from our intellectual nature, and developing the 
thoughts and intents of the heart. There is an internal sense 
to which it addresses itself, which can feel, examine, weigh, 
and decide upon its pretensions without pronouncing a word. 

In silencing, confuting, confounding, and converting the bold 
opposer with a hard heart and a seared conscience, we do take 
hold of those strong, stubborn, and prostrating arguments, 
drawn from what we sometimes call the extrinsic sources. But 
when we aim at converting the great mass of mankind, we only 
think of laying open the internal evidences. In the former 
case, we begin by proving that God speaks ; but, in the latter, 
we assume the fact, and prove it from what is spoken. That 
God speaks, ten thousand vouchers in the volume declare — 
none of which can be refuted. These are they which assure 
the Christian that his faith will never make him ashamed. 

But I will speak of the circumstantiality of the writers, that 
I may illustrate their sincerity . When a person attempts to 
impose upon us, he sometimes deals in generals, and avoids 
particulars. He keeps out to sea. He takes care not to deal 
much in dates, times, persons, and places of easy reference. 
He fears nothing more than specific terms, and minute details. 
But as there is a peculiar air of design, intrigue, imposture, or 
fiction, so there is an air of frankness, candor, honesty, sin- 
cerity, which it is as difficult to counterfeit, as to change 
the lineaments of the face. There is the physiognomy of 
truth. Sometimes it is mimicked. A labored minuteness 


432 


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instead of the unaffected details, an artificial particularity 
instead of the natural and incidental relation of circumstances, 
frequently, in works of fiction, assume much of their air of 
truth; but never so exact is the imitation as to escape the 
detection of the well-informed and accurate examiner. A 
secret consciousness of merited suspicion will always blush 
through the most labored concealment. But the consciousness 
of truth, will, without a challenge, court investigation, and defy 
contradiction. There is an air of this sort which accompanies 
conscious truth, that never can be perfectly counterfeited. 
This fearlessness of consequences, this eager desire of exam- 
ination, this courting of contradiction is the most prominent 
feature in the character of all the original witnesses who attest 
the evangelical story.— A. Campbell : Evidences , p. 284. 

McKidght on Gospels and Epistles. — The epistles and gospels, 
being the authentic record in which the whole doctrines, pre- 
cepts, and promises of the gospel are contained, we may 
believe that, although no injunction had been given by the 
apostles respecting the communication of their writings, the 
members of the Churches to which their epistles and gospels 
were sent, moved by their own piety and good sense, would be 
anxious to communicate them ; and would not grudge either 
the expense of transcribing them, or the trouble of sending 
them to all the Churches with which they had any connection* 
The persons likewise who were employed, whether in tran- 
scribing, or in carrying these excellent writings to the neighbor- 
ing Churches, would take great delight in the work ; thinking 
themselves both usefully and honorably employed. Nay, I am 
persuaded that such of the brethren as could afford the expense, 
and were capable of reading these divinely inspired writings, 
would get them transcribed for their own use ; so that copies 
of these books would be multiplied and dispersed in a very 
short time. This accounts for St. Paul’s epistles, in particular, 
being so generally known, read, and acknowledged by all Chris- 
tians, in the very first age ; as we learn from Peter, who speaks 
of the epistles which his beloved brother Paul had written to 
the persons to whom he himself wrote his second epistle, Chap, 
iii : 16. It seems, before Peter wrote that letter, that he had 
seen and read Paul’s epistles to the Galatians, the Ephesians, 
and the Collossians. He speaks also of all Paul’s other epistles ; 
from which some learned men have inferred, that Paul by that 


THE BIBLE. 


433 

time was dead, and that all his writings had come to Peter’s 
hands. Nay, Peter insinuates that they were then universally 
read and acknowledged as inspired writings ; for he tells us, “the 
ignorant and unstable wrested them, as they did the other 
Scriptures also, to their own destruction.” 

The writings of the apostles and e vangelists being thus early 
and widely dispersed among the disciples of Christ, I think it 
cannot be doubted that the persons who obtained copies of 
them, regarding them as precious treasures of divine truth, 
preserved them with the utmost care. We are morally certain, 
therefore, that none of the inspired writings, either of the evan- 
gelists or of the apostles, have been lost; and, in particular, 
that the suspicion which some have entertained of the loss of 
certain epistles of Paul, is destitute of probability. His 
inspired writings were all sent to persons greatly interested 
in them, who, while they preserved their own copies with the 
utmost care, were, no doubt, very diligent in circulating tran- 
scripts from them among the other Churches ; so that, being 
widely dispersed, highly respected, and much read, none of 
them, I think, could perish. What puts this matter beyond 
doubt is, that while all the sacred books which now remain are 
often quoted by the most ancient Christian writers, whose 
works have come down to us, in none of them, nor in any other 
author whatever, is there so much as a single quotation from 
any apostolical writing that is not at present in our canon ; nor 
the least hint from which it can be gathered, that any apostol- 
ical writing ever existed, which we do not at present possess. 

Farther, as none of the apostolical writings have been lost, 
so no material alteration hath taken place in any of those which 
remain. For the autographs having, in all probability, been 
long preserved with care, by the rulers of the Churches to 
which these writings were sent, if any material alteration, in 
particular copies, had ever been attempted, for the purpose of 
supporting heresy, the fraud must instantly have been detected 
by comparing the vitiated copies with the autographs. And 
even after the autographs, by length of time, or by accident, 
were lost, the consent of such a number of copies as might 
easily be procured and compared in every country, was at all 
times sufficient for establishing the genuine text, and for cor- 
recting whatever alteration might be made, whether through 
accident or design. Nor is this all : the many disputes about 

Bl 


434 


THE BIBLE. 


articles of faith which took place in the Christian Church, 
almost from the beginning, though productive of much mischief 
in other respects, secured the Scriptures from all vitiation. 
For the different sects of Christians, constantly appealing to 
the sacred oracles in support of their particular opinions, each 
would take care that their opponents quoted the Scriptures 
fairly, and transcribed them faithfully. And thus the different 
parties of Christians being checks on each other, every possi- 
bility of vitiating the Scriptures was absolutely precluded. 

Various Readings Considered. — With respect to the various 
readings of the books of the New Testament, about which 
deists have made such a noise, and well disposed persons 
have expressed such fears as if the sacred text were thereby 
rendered uncertain, I may take upon me to affirm, that the 
clamor of the former, and the fears of the latter, are without 
foundation. Before the invention of printing there was no 
method of multiplying the copies of books, but by transcribing 
them; and the persons who followed that business being liable, 
through carelessness, to transpose, omit and alter, not only 
letters, but words, and even whole sentences, it is plain that the 
more frequently any book was transcribed, the more numerous 
would the variations from the original text be in the one that 
was last transcribed ; because, in the new copy, besides the 
errors peculiar to the one from which it was taken, there would 
be all those also which the transcriber himself might fall into 
through carelessness. If, therefore, the MSS. which remain of 
any ancient book are of a late date, and few in number, the 
defects and errors of such a book will be many, and the various 
readings few; and as it is by the various readings alone that 
the defects and errors of particular copies can be redressed, 
the imperfections of that book will be without remedy. Of 
this, Hesy chius among the Greeks, and Velleius Paterculus 
among the Latins, are striking examples ; for as there is but 
one MS. copy of each of these authors remaining, the nu- 
merous errors and defects found in them are past all redress. 
Happily, this is not the case with the books of the New Testa- 
ment, of which there are more MSS. of different ages than of 
any other ancient writing. Wherefore, although by collating 
these MSS., different readings, to the amount of many thousands, 
have appeared, the text, instead of being rendered uncertain 
thereby, hath been fixed with greater precision: Because, 


THE BIBLE. 


435 


•with the help of sound criticism, learned men, from the vast 
variety of readings, obtained by comparing different copies, 
have been able to select, almost with certainty, those readings 
which originally composed the sacred text. 

This, however, though great, is not the only advantage the 
Scriptures have derived from the various readings found in the 
different MSS. of the New Testament which have been collated. 
For as these MSS. were found, some of them in Egypt, others 
of them in Europe, the distance of the places from whence 
they have been brought give us, as Bently hath well remarked, 
the fullest assurance that there never could be any collusion in 
altering or interpolating one copy by another, nor all by any 
one of them; and that, however numerous these readings may 
be, they have proceeded merely from the carelessness of 
transcribers, and by no means from bad design in any persons 
whatever. This important fact is set in the clearest light by 
the pains which learned men have taken in collating all the 
ancient translations of the Scriptures now remaining, and all 
the quotations from the Scriptures found in the writings of 
the fathers, even those which they made by memory, in order 
to mark the minutest variations from the originals. For 
although, by this means, the various readings have been 
increased to a prodigious number, we find but a very few of 
them that make any material alteration in the sense of the 
passages where they are found; and of those which give a 
different sense, it is easy for persons skilled in criticism to 
determine which is the genuine reading. These facts, which 
are all well known, prove, in the strongest manner, that the 
books of the New Testament have, from the beginning, 
remained unadulterated, and that in the various readings we 
have the genuine text of these books entire, or almost entire ; 
which is more than can be said of any other writing of equal 
antiquity, of which the MSS. are not so numerous, nor the 
various readings in such abundance. — McKnighVs Epistles : 
Preliminary Essays . 

Proofs of Paul’s Epistles.— The very particularity of St. Paul’s 
epistles ; the perpetual recurrence of names of persons and 
places ; the frequent allusions to the incidents of his private 
life, and the circumstances of his condition and history ; and 
the connection and parallelism of these with the same circum- 
stances in the Acts of the Apostles, so as to enable us, for the 


436 


THE BIBLE. 


most part, to confront them one with another; as well as the 
relation which subsists between the circumstances, as men- 
tioned or referred to in the different epistles, afford no 
inconsiderable proof of the genuineness of the writings, and 
the reality of the transactions. For as no advertency is suf- 
ficient to guard against slips and contradictions, when circum- 
stances are multiplied, and when they are liable to be detected 
by contemporary accounts equally circumstantial, an impostor,. 
I should expect, would either have avoided particulars entirely, 
contenting himself with doctrinal discussions, moral precepts 
and general reflections; or, if for the sake of imitating St. 
Paul’s style, he should have thought it necessary to intersperse 
his composition with names and circumstances, he would have 
placed. them out of the reach of comparison with the history. 

And I am confirmed in this opinion by the inspection of two- 
attempts to counterfeit St. Paul’s epistles, which have come 
down to us; and the only attempts of which we have any 
knowledge, that are at all deserving of regard. One of these 
is an epistle to the Laodeceans, extant in Latin, and preserved 
by Fabricius in his collection of apocryphal scriptures. The 
other purports to be an epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, 
in answer to an epistle from the Corinthians to him. This was 
translated by Scroderus from a copy in the Armenian language,, 
which had been sent to W. Whiston, and was afterwards, from 
a more perfect copy procured at Aleppo, published by his 
sons, as an appendix to their edition of Moses Chorenensis. 
No Greek copy exists of either ; they are not only not supported 
by ancient testimony, but they are negatived and excluded, as 
they have never found admission into any catalogue of apos- 
tolical writings acknowledged by, or known to the early ages 
of Christianity. In the first of these I found, as I expected, a 
total evitation of circumstances. It is simply a collection of 
sentences from the canonical epistles, strung together with 
very little skill. The second, which is a more versute and 
specious forgery, is introduced with a list of names of persons 
who wrote to St. Paul from Corinth ; and is preceded by an 
account sufficiently particular of the manner in which the 
epistle was sent from Corinth to St. Paul, and the answer 
returned. But they are names which no one ever heard of; 
and the account it is impossible to combine with anything found 
in the Acts, or in the other epistles. — Paley’s Horce Paulince r 

pp. 11-12. 


THE BIBLE. 


437 


The Seven Doubtful Epistles.— Seven books of the New Testa- 
ment, as is well known, have been received into the Canon on 
evidence less complete than that by which the others are 
supported. In the controversy which has been raised about 
their claims to Apostolic authority, much stress has been laid 
on their internal character. But such a method of reasoning 
is commonly inconclusive, and inferences are drawn on both 
sides with equal confidence. In every instance, the result will 
be influenced by preconceived notions of the early Church, 
and it is possible that an original source of information may be 
disparaged because it is independent. History must deliver its 
full testimony before internal criticism can find its proper use. 
And here the real question to be answered in the case of the 
disputed books is not, Why we receive them ? but, Why should 
we not receive them ? The general agreement of the Church, 
in the fourth century, is an antecedent proof of their claims ; 
rand it remains to be seen whether it is set aside by the more 
uncertain and fragmentary evidence of earlier generations. If, 
on the contrary, it can be proved that the books were known 
from the first, though not known universally ; if any explana- 
tion can be given of their limited circulation; if it can be shown 
■that they were more generally received as they were more widely 
known ; then it will appear that history has decided the matter, 
and this decision of history will be conclusive. The idea of 
forming the disputed books* into a Deutero-canon of the New 
Testament * * * though it appears plausible at first sight, 
is evidently either a mere confession that the question is inca- 
pable of solution, or a restatement of it in other words. The 
second epistle of St. Peter is either an authentic work of the 
Apostle or a forgery; for in this case there can be no mean. 
And the Epistles of St. James and St. Jude, and that to the 
Hebrews, if they are genuine, are Apostolic, at least in the 
same sense as the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke and the 
Acts of the Apostles. It involves a manifest confusion of 
ideas to compensate for a deficiency of historical proof by a 
lower standard of Canonicity. The extent of the divine 
authority of a book cannot be made to vary with the com- 
pleteness of the proof of its genuineness. The genuineness 
must be admitted before the authority can have any positive 


* James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Hebrews, and Apocalypse. 


438 


THE BIBLE. 


value which, from its nature, cannot' admit of degrees. — B. F ► 
Westcott : Canon of the Few Testament, pp. 305-6. 

Alexander’s Views of Them. — The first epistle of Peter, and the 
first of John, are quoted by Ignatius, Poly carp, and Papias, but 
not expressly as the writings of these apostles. J ustin Martyr 
has a saying which is nowhere found in Scripture, except in 
the second of Peter ; it is, “ that a day of the Lord is a thou- 
sand years.” Diognetus quotes several passages from the first 
of Peter, and the first of John. Irenseus quotes the first 
epistle of Peter expressly, “And Peter says, in his epistle,. 
whom having not seen ye love/ J And from the second he takes 
the same passage which has just been cited, as quoted by 
Justin Martyr. The first and second of John are expressly 
quoted by this Father, for after citing his gospel he goes on to 
say, “ Wherefore also in his epistle he says, 4 Little children , it 
is the last time J ” * * * Several passages 

out of the epistle of James are also cited by this father 
(Irenseus). Athenagoras also has some quotations which appear 
to be from James and second of Peter. Clement, of Alexan- 
dria, often quotes the first of Peter and sometimes the second 
of Peter. The first epistle of John is often cited by him. 
Jude also is quoted several times expressly, as “Of these and 
the like heretics, I think Jude spoke prophetically, when he 
said, ( I will that ye shall know, that God having saved the people 
out of Egypt,” etc. * * * Justin Martyr, 

Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian, and others, quote from Bevela- 
tions thus : “One of the Apostles of Christ, in the Bevelation 
made to him, has prophesied that the believers in our Christ 
shall live a thousand years in Jerusalem,” etc. “ It was seen 
(Bevelation) no long time ago in our age, at the end of the reign 
of Domitian.” “John, in his Apocalypse,” etc. — Alexander : 
Evidences, pp. 228-37. 

Upshot of Infidel Industry. — The upshot of all this industry is 
just this, that, after two or three ambiguous cases have been 
allowed for, the apostolic antiquity of the several portions of 
the New Testament canon is out of the question; and that as 
to the Epistles, with which alone I am at present concerned, 
the genuineness and authenticity of these writings rests upon 
evidence one-tenth part of which has been customarily admitted 
as sufficient, in any parallel instance, on the field of classical 
literature. It must be a sickly affectation, or it must indicate 


THE BIBLE. 


439 


a feebleness of the reasoning faculty, to speak in any other 
tone than this of the result of those critical explorations of 
which the canonical epistles have been the subject, in the 
course of the last fifty or sixty years . — Isaac Taylor : Restora- 
tion of Belief, p. 120. 

Huxley’s Eulogy of the Bible. — I have always been strongly in 
favor of secular education, in the sense of education without 
theology ; but I must confess I have been no less seriously 
perplexed to know by what practical measures the religious 
feeling, which is the essential basis of conduct, was to be kept 
up, in the present utterly chaotic state of opinion on these 
matters, without the use of the Bible. The* pagan moralists 
lack life and color, and even the noble Stoic, Marcus 
Antoninus, is too high and refined for an ordinary child. Take 
the Bible as a whole ; make the severest deductions which fair 
criticism can dictate for shortcomings and positive errors ; 
eliminate, as a sensible lay teacher would do, if left to himself, 
all that it is not desirable for children to occupy themselves 
with ; and there still remains in this old literature a vast 
residuum of moral beauty and grandeur. And then consider 
the great historical fact that, for three centuries, this book has 
been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in 
English history; that it has become the national epic of 
Britain, and is familiar to noble and simple, from John o’ 
Groat’s house to Land’s End, as Dante and Tasso were once to 
the Italians ; that it is written in the noblest and purest English, 
and abounds in exquisite beauties of a merely literary form ; and, 
finally, that it forbids the veriest hind who never left his village 
to be ignorant of the existence of other countries and other 
civilizations, and of a great past, stretching back to the furthest 
limits of the oldest nations in the world. By the study of 
what other book could children be so much humanized, and 
made to feel that each figure in that vast historical procession 
fills, like themselves, but a momentary space in the interval 
between two eternities ; and earns the blessings or the curses 
of all time, according to its effort to do good and hate evil, 
even as they also are earning their payment for their work ? 

“And if Bible reading is not accompanied by constraint and 
solemnity, as if it were a sacramental operation, I do not 
believe there is anything in which children take more pleasure. 
At least I know that some of the pleasantest recollections of 


440 


THE BIBLE. 


my childhood are connected with the voluntary study of an 
ancient Bible which belonged to my grandmother . — Professor 
Huxley: Contemporary Review , 1870. 

Magill’s Eulogy.— Strike down the Bible, and you will have 
the universal debauchery of heathenism. Exchange the Bible 
for the dictate of unaided reason, and for a time you may dwell 
in the shade of art, and play at the gymnastics of eloquence; 
but come at length it will, and the glory of modern society 
shall go up in rottenness — introducing the reign of ignorance, 
cruelty, sensuality and despair. Foiv Deism, pure theism, 
natural religion, materialism, scepticism, infidelity, atheism, are 
the successive stages of that historical rationalism, which for 
the last three centuries has been at work in Europe, and red- 
dened its annals with atrocities of crime and blood “ which, for 
the safety of their performers, had to be enveloped in ever- 
lasting night.” The Bible is the book for humanity, not only 
because it contains all necessary truth and a perfect moral 
code — things of which all other religions are destitute — but 
because there is a resistless energy in it to renew and purify 
the moral nature of our species, an energy which it has proved 
on a thousand fields of fame, over thirty centuries of time, in 
every variety of human condition, and in open conflict with all 
the powers of earth and hell. It has wrestled with an apos- 
tate Judaism; with heathenism, encamped amid the pomps and 
grandeur of imperial Rome; with the philosophies of the 
Greek schools, buttressed by all the charms of human learning 
and exalted genius; with the traditional superstition of the 
“ man of sin,” whose hostility to the written Word kept Chris- 
tendom for ten centuries a prison-cell for saints, for freedom of 
conscience, for freemen, and for saving truth; and now, in the 
end of the world, when systems of speculation are rising on 
our horizon, varied and unsubstantial as November meteors — 
now linking tfiemselves to the orb of science, now to meta- 
physics, now to the spawn of an overweening egotism, now to 
the importations of German or Indian exuviae, and often to an 
intellectual sky-rocket, to attract notice and alarm the vulgar 
— the Bible stands forth in its integrity, the palladium of moral 
freedom, the only true spring of individual and rational excel- 
lence, the conservatory of all the roots and fruits of Divine 
virtue, which alone has power to cleanse the earth of Pagan- 
ism. and to restore man to himself and to God bv the science 


THE BIBLE. 


441 


of right and of truth. — William Magill : Reply to Belfast 
Address. 

What the Bible Does ana is. — Employing as its only weapon, 
truth, it repudiates the force and despotism of other religions. 
It presents God in all the radiancy of an infinitely holy love ; 
and this suits the heart of man. It sheds light on morals, on 
men, on salvation, on the life to come — a clear and certain 
light; and this fits in to his reason. It reveals an absolution 
from sin, which, founded on the loving self-sacrifice of a Divine 
substitute, does not compromise perfect rectitude or blot the 
Divine character and law, and that suits all the requirements 
of conscience. It imparts from its Divine author a new life 
which, consisting in love, lifts its possessor into the fellowship 
of the Absolute One ; and, embracing eternity in its provisions, 
runs up the road of perfection, scattering every gift that can 
make existence a blessing — thus fitting divinely in to the needs 
of his immortal essence. For forty centuries and more this 
tree of life has been wafting holiness, life and happiness through 
this sinful world ; and its saving odor is still exhaustless. It 
has taught men all that time how to live ; it has enabled them 
to die. It has brought real happiness into the world; and, 
wherever it has been received, it has drained the fountains of 
human misery. It has saved the felon in his cell, the savage in 
his war-paint, Paul in his harness of hate, and Augustine in 
his vice. It has been the pillow of the martyr’s peace — the 
parent of humility, self-sacrifice and hope. It has beautified 
whatever it touched, quickened souls innumerable, and 
imparted consummate finish to ideas, to taste, and to genius. 
The purest comfort of earth drops from its word into hearts 
broken by bereavement or indigence; It is the key of knowl- 
edge. It has conducted pilgrims innumerable to the celestial 
mansions; for it alone possesses the secret of salvation. 

This holy book is the manna of the world. It is the map of 
a river in which whosoever washes is healed of the leprosy of 
sin ; and in the radiant bloom of health he comes forth to a 
life which soars above the highest seraph, and is ever stretch- 
ing towards God. Milton grandly described the Archangel 
Uriel as descending to the earth in a sunbeam. The revelation 
of the Bible is a beam on which the Father of lights descends 
into men to dwell with them. Sweeter than the dews of six 
thousand summers is the living bread which the Bible brings 


442 


THE BIBLE. 


to a perishing world. What though it rained gold and pearls 
and king’s crowns on our guilty race, it were better to give 
them the Bible. Salvation! Weigh it against all created 
things. Measure it by eternity. Lay the plummet of infinity 
to its blessings. Appeal to Him who weighs the mountains in 
scales and the hills in a balance to teach you its worth. Climb 
to the throne of the Eternal, where the universe collects her 
glories to decorate the palace of our King, and thence survey 
all things that are made. Salvation excels all you know and 
see; for it makes God Himself your everlasting portion. 

And if the time should ever come when it will rain infidels, 
there is a truth which no science can impeach, no learning 
undermine, no hate can annihilate ; and that truth is — oh, that 
I could carry it round the world! — that they are a happy people 
who know the joyful sound, and whose God Jehovah is. Give 
the revelation of the Bible in its simplicity, holiness and majesty 
— the inspired Word of God — to the mind and heart of the 
human race, till they taste and see its grace and truth, its light 
and life ; and soon the red dawn of that day of applied redemp- 
tion for the whole world, to which seers and saints looked 
forward, will be seen on the mountains ; for very joy the wilder- 
ness shall rejoice and blossom as the rose ; the sigh for renewal, 
which this groaning creation has emitted, shall find its response 
in the bloom of a new heavens and a new earth, in which, as in 
a mountain-lake, heaven will mirror itself ; man shall replace 
on his brow the crown of fine gold, undimmed, that had long 
since fallen from his head ; this perturbed world shall 
become a Beulah of beauty, the calm home of peace, a 
Goshen of abundance, the worthy avenue of an immortal 
Paradise ; and from the throne of His triumphant Mediator- 
ship, He who has the keys of hell and of death shall look down 
in complacency, and the light of His countenance beam full 
upon it. — William Magill : Ibid . 

Talmage’s Fiery Thought. — By some shaft from hell, let the 
sun be cleft in twain, until, with shorn locks and dimmed eye, 
he stumbles his way through the heavens ; but shear not this 
glorious old Bible of a single lock. The same infernal explo- 
sion that sent up into fragments a single book would shock 
the whole system of truth. Fire one house in a solid square, 
and into the whole block you hurl fiery destruction. Take one 
star from a whirling constellation, and the wheel of fire would 


THE BIBLE. 


443 


crush on the highway of light; and remove one orb from this 
constellation of Bible-books that revolve about Jesus, the 
central sun, and heaven itself would shriek at the catastrophe, 
amid the weeping of a God. When life, like an ocean, billows 
up with trouble, and death comes, and our bark is sea-smitten, 
with halyards cracked and white sails flying in shreds, like a 
maniac’s gray locks in the wind, then we will want God’s Word 
to steer us off the rocks, and shine like light-houses through 
the dark channels of death, and with hands of light beckon 
our storm-tossed souls into the harbor. In that last hour take 
from me my pillow, take away all soothing draughts, take away 
the faces of family and kindred, take away every helping hand 
and every consoling voice ; alone let me die on the mountain, 
on a bed of rock, covered only by a sheet of embroidered 
frost, under the slap of the night- wind, and breathing out my 
life on the bosom of the wild, wintry blast, rather than in that 
last hour take from me my Bible. Stand off, then, ye carping, 
clipping, meddling critics, with your penknives ! — T. Dewitt 
Talmage : Vol . 1 , pp. 38-39. 

A Perpetual Beginning. — The Bible is a perpetual beginning, 
rich in its immediate satisfactions, but richer still in its promises. 
Through every revelation there is a hint of another re velation to 
come. The Bible has a wonderful firmament, out of which the 
light comes, and the rain, and from which the key of heaven 
may at any moment drop. Its earth is very legible ; its 
firmament is an eternal mystery. * * * * It is 

a page torn out of the great volume of life ; only torn by the 
hand of God, and annotated by His Spirit. — Joseph Parker: 
Paraclete . 

A Book of Joy. — I call the New Testament the Book of Joy. 
There is not in the world a book which is pervaded with such 
a spirit of exhileration. Nowhere does it pour forth a melan- 
choly strain. Often pathetic, it is never gloomy. Full of 
sorrows, it is full of victory over sorrow. In all the round of 
literature there is not another book that can cast such cheer 
and inspire such hope. Yet it eschews humor, and foregoes 
wit. It is intensely earnest, and yet full of quiet ; it is pro- 
foundly solemn, and yet there is not a strain of morbid feeling 
in it. — Beecher: Vol. 1st , p. 13. 

What Would be Destroyed With the Bible. — The highest historical 
probability can be adduced in support of the proposition, that, 


444 


THE BIBLE. 


if it were possible to annihilate the Bible, and with it all its 
influences, we should destroy with it the whole spiritual 
system of the moral world — all our great moral ideas — refine- 
ment of manners— constitutional government — equitable ad- 
ministration and security of property — our schools, hospitals 
and benevolent associations; the press, the fine arts, the 
equality of the sexes and the blessings of the fireside ; in a 
word, all that distinguishes Europe and America from Turkey 
and Hindostan. — Edward Everett . 

Theodore Parker’s Utterance. — “This collection of books,” says 
Theodore Parker, in a passage of great eloquence, “ has taken 
such hold of the world as no other. The literature of Greece, 
which goes up like incense from that land of temples and 
heroic deeds, has not half the influence of this book from a 
nation despised alike in ancient and in modern times. * * * 

It goes equally to the cottage of the plain man and the palace 
of the king. It is woven into the literature of the scholar, and 
colors the talk of the streets. It enters men’s closets, 
mingles in all the grief and cheerfulness of life. The 
Bible attends men in sickness, when the fever of the 
world is on them. * * * * It is the better 

part of our sermons ; it lifts man above himself. Our best of 
uttered prayers are in its storied speech, wherewith our 
fathers and the patriarchs prayed. The timid man, about to 
wake from his dream of life, looks through the glass of Scrip- 
ture, and his eye grows bright ; he does not fear to stand alone, 
to tread the way unknown and distant, to take the death 
angel by the hand, and bid farewell to wife and babes and 
home. * * * * Some thousand famous writers come up 

in this century to be forgotten in the next. But the silver cord 
of the Bible is not loosed, nor its golden bowl broken, as 
Time chronicles his tens of centuries passed by.” — Quoted by 
Henry Rogers , in “ Superhuman Origin of Bible ” 

Bancroft. — Philosophy has sometimes forgotten God; as 
great people never did. The skepticism of the last century 
could not uproot Christianity, because it lived in the hearts 
of the millions. Do you think that infidelity is spreading? 
Christianity never. lived in the hearts of so many millions as at 
this moment. The forms under which it is professed may 
decay, for they, like all that is the work of man’s hands, are 
subject to the changes and chances of mortal being; but the 


THE BIBLE. 


445 


spirit of truth is incorruptible; it may be developed, illus- 
trated and applied ; it can never die; it never can decline. No 
truth can perish. No truth can pass away. The flame is undy- 
ing, though generations disappear. Wherever mortal truth 
has started into being humanity claims and guards the bequest. 
Each generation gathers together the imperishable children t)f 
the past, and increases them by the new sons of the light, alike 
radiant with immortality. — Bancroft . 

Whipple. — Take the gospel away, and what a mockery is 
human philosophy ! I once met a thoughtful scholar who told 
me that for years he had read every book which assailed the 
religion of Jesus Christ. He said that he should have become 
an infidel if it had not been for three things : 

u First, I am a man. I am going somewhere. I am to-night 
a day nearer the grave than last night. I have read all that 
they can tell me. There is not one solitary ray of light upon 
the darkness. They shall not take away the only guide and 
leave me stone blind. 

“ Secondly, I had a mother. I saw her go down into the dark 
valley where I am going, and she leaned upon an unseen arm as 
calmly as a child goes to sleep upon the breast of a mother. I 
know that was not a dream. 

u Thirdly,” he said, with tears in his eyes, “I have three 
motherless daughters. They have no protector but myself. I 
would rather kill them than leave them in this sinful world if 
you could blot out from it all the teachings of the Gospel.” 
Bishop Whipple. 

Webster. — When Daniel Webster was in his best moral state, 
and when he was in the prime of his manhood, he was one day 
dining with a company of literary gentlemen in the city of 
Boston. The company was composed of clergymen, lawyers, 
physicians, statesmen, merchants, and almost all classes of 
literary persons. During the dinner conversation incidentally 
turned upon the subject of Christianity. Mr. Webster, as the 
occasion was in honor of him, was expected to take a leading 
part in the conversation, and he frankly stated as his religious 
sentiments his belief in the divinity of Christ, and his depen- 
dence upon the atonement of the Savior. A minister of very 
considerable literary reputation sat almost opposite him at the 
table, and he looked at him and said : “ Mr. Webster, can you 

comprehend how Jesus Christ could be both God and man?” 


446 


THE BIBLE. 


Mr. Webster, with one of those looks which no man can 
imitate, fixed his eyes upon him, and promptly and emphatically 
said: “No, sir, I cannot comprehend it; and I would be 
ashamed to acknowledge him as my Savior if I could compre- 
hend it. If I could comprehend him, he could be no greater 
than myself, and such is my conviction of accountability to 
God, such 'is my sense of sinfulness before him, and such is 
my knowledge of my own incapacity to recover myself, that I 
feel I need a superhuman Savior.” — j Bishop Janes. 

So great is my veneration for the Bible, that the earlier my 
children begin to read it, the more confident will be my 
hopes that they will prove useful citizens to their country, 
and respectable members of society. — John Quincy Adams. 

It is impossible to govern the world without God. He must 
be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked 
that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligation. — 
General George Washington. 

Pointing to the family Bible on the stand, during his last 
illness, Andrew Jackson said to his friend : “That book, sir, is 
the rock on which our republic rests.” 

I deem the present occasion sufficiently important and 
solemn to justify me in expressing to my fellow-citizens a 
profound reverence for the Christian religion, and a thorough 
conviction that sound morals, religious liberty, and a just 
sense of religious responsibility, are essentially connected 
with all true and lasting happiness. — General Harrison's Inau- 
gural Address. 

As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particu- 
larly desire, I think the system of morals, and His religion, as 
He left them to us, is the best the world ever saw, or is likely 
to see. — Benjamin FranJdin. 

Do you think that your pen, or the pen of any other man, 
can unchristianize the mass of our citizens? Or have you 
hopes of corrupting a few of them to assist you in so bad a 
cause? — Samuel Adams' Letter to Thomas Paine. 

Christianity is the only true and perfect religion, and that in 
proportion as mankind adopt its principles and obey its 
precepts, they will be wise and happy. And a better knowledge 
of this religion is to be acquired by reading the Bible than in 
any other way. — Benjamin Rush. 


THE BIBLE. 


447 


When that illustrious man, Chief Justice Jay, was dying, he 
was asked if he had any farewell address to leave his children; 
he replied, “ They have the Bible.” 

I always have had. and always shall have, a profound regard 
for Christianity, the religion of my fathers, and for its rites, its 
usages, and observances. —Henry Clay, 

A few days before his death, “the foremost man of all his 
times,” drew up and signed this declaration of his religious faith : 
“Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. Philosophical 
argument, especially that drawn from the vastness of the 
universe, in comparison with the insignificance of this globe, 
has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith that is in me, 
but my heart has always assured and reassured me that the 
gospel of Jesus Christ must be a divine reality. The Sermon 
on the Mount cannot be a merely human production. This 
belief enters into the very depth of my conscience.” — Daniel 
Webster . 

Hold fast to the Bible as the sheet anchor of our liberties ; 
write its precepts on your hearts, and practice them in your 
lives. To the influence of this book we are indebted for the 
progress made in true civilization, and to this we must look as 
our guide in the future. — U. 8 . Grant . 

Providence has ordered it so that the New Testament 
can appeal to a far larger number of all kinds of original 
sources than the whole of the rest of ancient Greek literature. 
— Prof. Tischendorf : Preface to English Hew Testament. 

“ Bead to me,” said the dying Scott to his son-in-law. 

“ What book shall I read to you f” said Lockhart. 

“ Can you ask me ?” was the reply. “ There is but one book.” 

There is a book worth all other books which were ever 
printed. — Patrick Henry . 

The Bible is the best book in the world. — John Adams. 

It is a belief in the Bible which has served me as the guide 
of my moral and literary life. — Goethe. 

I account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime 
philosophy. — Sir Isaac Hewton. 

To give a man a full knowledge of true morality, I should 
need to send him to no other book than the New Testament. — 
John Locke . 


448 


THE BIBLE. 


I know the Bible is inspired, because it finds me at greater 
depths of my being than any other book. — Coleridge. 

A noble book ! All men’s book. It is our first statement of 
the never-ending problem of man’s destiny and God’s way with 
men on earth. — Carlyle. 

I must confess the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with 
astonishment. — Rousseau. 

There is not a boy nor a girl, all Christendom through, but 
their lot is made better by this great book. — Theodore Parker. 

Tell the Prince that this (a costly copy of the Bible) is the 
secret of England’s greatness. — QueenVictoria. 

I have always said and always will say, that the studious 
perusal of the Sacred Volume will make better citizens, better 
fathers and better husbands. — Thomas Jefferson. 

The Bible is equally adapted to the wants and infirmities of 
every human being. No other book ever addressed itself so 
authoritatively and so pathetically to the judgment and moral 
sense of mankind. — Chancellor James Kent. 

I have read the Bible morning, noon and night, and have 
ever since been the happier and better man for such reading. 
— Edmund Burke. 

I do not believe human society, including not merely a few 
persons in any state, but whole masses of men, ever haa 
attained, or ever can attain, a high state of intelligence, virtue r 
security, liberty, or happiness, without the Holy Scriptures. — 
William H. Seward. 

The Bible is the only cement of nations, and the only cement 
that can bind religious hearts together. — Chevalier Bunsen. 

I defy you all, as many as are here, to prepare a tale so simple 
and so touching, as the tale of the passion and death of Jesus 
Christ, whose influence will be the same after so many 
centuries. — Denis Diderot. 

The Bible is the best book in the world. It contains more 
of my little philosophy than all the libraries I have ever seen. 
— John Adams (Second President of United States). 


INFIDELITY. 


S EMON of Infidelity Abroad. — There are giants on the earth in 
these days, both in one encampment and in the other. A 
mighty force is on the side of the friends of truth, but it is 
sadly divided and scattered. What is wanting is the strength 
of union, the concentration of those energies in defending the 
citadel and making inroads on the enemy, which are spent on 
the defence of comparatively unimportant posts, or in one de- 
tachment of the same corps guarding against the encroachment 
of another. The champions of error, though not without their 
discords and divisions, are yet wiser in their generation than 
the children of light. As of old, they discern the signs of the 
times, and take counsel together against the Lord, and against 
his Anointed. The press, to which, under God, we owe much 
of our light and liberties, wields a mighty influence on the side 
of evil. The halls of philosophy, hallowed though they be by 
many a name illustrious for Christian worth, as well as intel- 
lectual greatness, are often sending forth doctrines as gross aa 
the earth or as vague as the air, but alike adverse to that truth 
which, coming from above, is above all. Our current literature 
and works on science, with not a few bright and beneficent ex- 
ceptions, are hostile either by their silence in reference to 
divine truth when their subjects afford them occasions to speak 
out, or by their'avowed opposition to much of what constitutes 
the essence of true religion. The earth is not still and at rest. 
Men of every class are searching after an unknown good. The 
demon of infidelity is stalking abroad, knocking at the palaces 
of the rich and the cottages of the poor, transforming itself 
into this shape and that, and, becoming all things, except an 
angel of good, to all men. — Pearson : Preface to Infidelity . 

Why Men of Talent Oppose the Scriptures.— I have often won- 
dered what could be the reason that men, not destitute of 
talents, should be desirous of undermining the authority of 
revealed religion, and studious in exposing, with a malignant 
and illiberal exultation, every little difficulty attending the 
cl 


450 


INFIDELITY. 


Scriptures, to popular animadversion and contempt. I am not 
willing to attribute this strange propensity to what Plato at- 
tributed the atheism of his time — to profligacy of manners — 
to affectation of singularity — to gross ignorance, assuming the 
semblance of deep research and superior sagacity: — I had 
rather refer it to an impropriety of judgment respecting the 
manners, and mental acquirements, of human kind in the first 
ages of the world. 

Most unbelievers argue as if they thought that man in remote 
and rude antiquity, in the very birth and infancy of our species, 
had the same distinct conceptions of one, eternal, invisible, 
incorporeal, infinitely wise, powerful, and good God, which they 
themselves have now. This I look upon as a great mistake, and 
a pregnant source of infidelity. Human kind, by long experi- 
ence ; by the institutions of civil society ; by the cultivation of 
arts and sciences ; by, as I believe, divine instruction actually 
given to some, and traditionally communicated to all : is in a 
far more distinguished situation, as to the powers of mind, than 
it was in the childhood of the world. The history of man, is the 
history of the Providence of God ; who, willing the supreme 
felicity of all his creatures, has adapted his government to the 
capacity of those, who in different ages were the subjects of it 
— - Watson's Apology, p. 12. 

Hoorn for Diversity of Opinion Without Giving Up Faith.— There 
is room for a diversity of opinion about modes of ecclesiastical 
government, external rites and ceremonies, and the interpreta- 
tion of certain Scriptural passages, but no one who has ears to 
hear, and who humbly listens to the voices of nature and rev- 
elation, can fail to discover what God is, and what He has done, 
what man is, and what he needs. Infidelity, then, is found to 
manifest itself in such forms as the following : in the denial of 
the divine existence, or absolute atheism; in the denial of the 
divine personality or pantheism ; in the denial of the divine, 
providential government or naturalism ; in the denial of the 
divine redemption or pseudo-spiritualism. And to these may 
be added, what belongs more properly to practical, than to 
theoretical infidelity, the denial of man’s responsibility, or 
indifferentism ; and the denial of the power of godliness, or 
formalism. 

The Negation Complete. — Here the negation i» complete. The 
work of demolishing things esteemed sacred has advanced so far 


INFIDELITY. 


451 


as to leave nothing more to the destroyer to do. He has reached 
the dreary brink from which many destroyers, by no means cra- 
ven-hearted, have shrunk back. And from that bad pre-eminence 
he looks upwards to the heavens, vacant at first in his wishes, 
and now in his creed, and with as much boldness as if he had 
traveled through the realms of space and beheld all dark and 
desolate, says, “ There is there no God ! ” He looks down to 
the gulf of annihilation, and amid the troubles of his godless 
existence, feels something like a morbid satisfaction in the 
thought that the grave is an eternal sleep and the present 
scene the whole of man. — Pearson on Infidelity, p. 6. 

The Spectre from which Men are Flying.— The spectre from 
which men and women are flying is a God whom they cannot 
trust and cannot love. We may try to cure symptoms by pro- 
ducing evidences of Christianity, or by exposing superstition. 
But we shall find that we have not reached the root of the dis- 
ease, and that it will always be appearing in new forms. Have 
we a Gospel for men, for all men ? Is it a Gospel that God’s 
will is a will to all Good, a will to deliver them from all 
Evil ? Is it a Gospel that He has reconciled the world unto 
Himself? Is it this absolutely, or this with a multitude of 
reservations, explanations, contradictions? Such questions 
must be asked by those who are desirous of restoring faith 
among the upper and middle classes, or of lifting the lower 
out of the pit into which we have allowed them to sink. If 
they cannot be answered, the gentler and feminine spirits will 
try what help they can get from the Pope ; the speculative will 
become Pantheists ; the people will become Atheists. — F. D. 
Maurice : Preface to The Prophets and Kings of the Old 
Testament . 

Those we Can Sympathize With and Those we Cannot.— The 

history of recent doubt has brought before us some whose 
minds doubt wholly of the supernatural. In the case of a few 
of these, but only of a few, the doubt has passed into positive 
unbelief; their convictions have become so fixed that they 
manifest a fierce spirit of proselytism, and can dare to point 
the finger of scorn at those who still believe in the unseen 
and supernatural relations of God to the human soul. Between 
these and religious men uhe struggle is internecine. We can 
have no sympathy with them ; we can rejoice that they retain a 
moral standard, where they have rejected many of the most 


452 


INFIDELITY. 


potent motives which support it ; but must tremble lest their 
unbelief end in thorough animalism; lest Epicureanism be their 
final philosophy. But there are many more whose tone is that 
of sadness, not of scorn; the temper of Heraclitus, not 
Democritus ; whose souls feel the longing want which nothing 
but communion with a Father in heaven can supply, but who 
are so clouded with doubt, and retain so faint a hold on the 
thought of God’s interference, and on the reality of the 
supernatural, that they are unable to soar on the wings of 
faith beyond the natural, either material or spiritual, up to the 
throne of God. 

A Mighty Mental Convulsion.— The history of such men gene- 
rally tells of some mighty mental convulsion, which has driven 
them from their anchor-ground of belief. Sometimes the 
study of science, as it is seen gradually to absorb successive 
ranges of phenomena into the regular operation of universal 
law, until it removes God far away, and creation seems to* 
move on without His interference, has been the cause; — in 
other cases philanthropic pity, musing on the sad catastrophes 
which daily occur, when the happiness and lives of innocent 
human beings are forever destroyed by the stern unyield- 
ing action of nature’s laws, leading the heart to doubt 
God’s nearness, and the fact of a special Providence ; — in other 
cases, again, the study of the human mind in history, and the 
perception of the manner in which the gradual growth of 
knowledge seems to lessen the region of the supernatural, until 
the mind doubts whether the supernatural itself is not the 
mere idolurn tribus , a mere giving objective being to a subjective 
idea, a truth relative merely to a particular stage of civilization. 
Such causes as these producing a convulsion of feeling, may 
form the sad occasion from which the soul dates its loss of the 
grasp which it has heretofore had over the belief of God’s 
nearness, and of religion ; and mark the moment from which it 
has gradually doubted whether anything exists save eternal 
law ; or whether a personal Deity, if he exist, really communes 
with man; whether, in short, religion be anything but duty, 
and Christianity anything but the noble type of it to which 
one branch of the Semitic people was happy enough to 
attain. 

The Saddest of Doubts. — Doubts like these, where they exist in 
a high-principled and delicate mind, are the saddest sight in 


INFIDELITY 


453 


nature. Tlie spirit that feels them does not try to proselytize ; 
they are his sorrow ; he wishes not others to taste their bitter- 
ness. Any one of us who may have ever felt chilled, as the 
thought insinuated itself, of the remote possibility of the per- 
ception of the machine-like sweep of universal law removing 
our belief of the guardian of Him to alone we can fly for refuge 
when heart or flesh faileth, as to a Father as infinite in 
tenderness as in condescension, the friend of the friend- 
less; — whoever has known the bitterness of the thought 
of a universe unguided by a God of Justice, and without 
:an eternity wherein the cry of an afflicted creation shall 
no longer remain unavenged, has known the first taste of 
the cup of sorrow which is mournfully drunk by spirits such 
us we are describing. And who that has known it would 
grudge the labor of a life, if by example, by exhortation, by 
prayer, he might be the means of rescuing one such soul ? — 
A. S. Farrar: Critical History of Free Thought , pp. 358-9. 

A Few Reasons for Skepticism. — The laws of historical develop- 
ment are inexorable ; the seed sown was Jesuitical morality 
and superstition; the harvest reaped was materialism and 
infidelity. * * * The great Protestant Reformation, with all 
its added strength to the cause of faith, will be likewise found 
to have introduced fresh elements of danger. We now see 
the great religious principle of man’s personal responsibility, 
though maintained by the Reformers in the strictest subordina- 
tion to the supreme authority of the Divine Word, aiming more 
and more, under humanistic and other influences, at unlimited 
self-assertion, and gradually emancipating itself frcm every 
kind of authority, even unto fundamental articles of faith. 
■* * * * What was it that in the last century pre- 
pared the way among ourselves for the prevalence of Rational- 
ism ? Was it not the petrifaction of evangelical faith into the 
dry forms of a dead orthodoxy, accompanied by an almost total 
•cessation of all further efforts for the diffusion of the gospel? 
* * * * What was it but the cold and stiff morality, 

the absence of all spiritual life and fervor, and the hard, 
unsympathetic deism of our preachers and theologians which 
Tepelled ardent and poetic minds like Schiller ? * * * 

It is a phenomenon that meets us in the earliest history of the 
Christian Church, that the outbreak of heresies goes hand in 
hand with the loss of spiritual life in the Church at large ; that 


454 


INFIDELITY. 


the rise of doubts has often coincided with the prevalence of 
fruitless controversies. How has the Church commonly acted 
in reference to such opposition, brought upon her frequently 
by her own fault ? Has she not, both in earlier and later times, 
been all too ready to condemn those who differed from her 
with stern anathemas, and to call in the aid of the secular arm 
to enforce obedience from the unconvinced and unwilling? 
And yet how much better would it have become her to have 
enquired, when opposition arose, what fault of her own might 
have given it occasion, and even some measure of right! How 
well would she have done in endeavoring to lay down from the 
very first a broad line of demarcation between undoubted and 
unchangeable Scripture truth, and the human forms of ecclesi- 
astical practice ? * * * A sort of natural religion 

began to be taught both in upper and lower schools, in which 
it was endeavored to demonstrate the principles of Christian 
faith entirely by those of natural reason. Eevealed religion,, 
under this process, soon appeared to become a superfluity, 
and whatever in it could not be demonstrated by reason 
was quietly abandoned. * * * With Kant’a 

successors, Fichte and Schelling and Hegel, these efforts 
of speculative reason were under much less restraint; 
and even the sacred triad of God, Freedom and Immortality,, 
which Kant had endeavored to maintain by appeals to practical 
reason, was absorbed, along with the idea of Divine Personality* 
in an all-confounding idealistic Pantheism. * * * 

Modern unbelief is only in part a new phenomenon. Christi- 
anity has never existed in the world without experiencing 
opposition. “This same is set for a sign that shall be spoken 
against.” — Christlieb ; Modern Doubt and Christian Belief r 

pp. 1 - 16 . 

[Feeling the need of giving the reader at least an epitome of the 
causes of infidelity, we have gathered these few disjointed fragments 
from one of our latest apologists. — Ed.'] 

Literary and Scientific Skeptics.— Let us look at the literary 
and scientific unbelievers. I speak not of individuals — I 
speak of the body, as known by their writings, publicly 
submitted to the view of mankind. What is the temper of 
mind in which they have obviously entered upon the inquiry? 
Are docility, earnestness, a devotional and humble reliance 
upon God in prayer, and obedience to His will, at all apparent 


INFIDELITY. 


455 


in the general tenor of their books ? Is this the complexion of 
their reasoning? Do they not, so far from acting in such a 
temper, generally disavow, ridicule or condemn it ? Mark their 
whole spirit and conduct! Instead of docility, observe the 
unfairness, the inconsistency, the dishonesty with which they 
conceal or pervert the plainest facts. Instead of seriousness, 
notice their proud, supercilious, flippant levity in treating the 
most solemn of subjects. — Wilson’s Evidences: Vol. l,p. 33. 

[Can this criticism, injustice, be limited to the literary and scientific 
skeptics ? — Ed .] 

Rousseau’s Keen Observation of Men. — I have consulted our 
philosophers, I have perused their books, I have examined 
their several opinions, I have found them all proud, 
positive and dogmatical, even in their pretended skepticism ; 
knowing everything, proving nothing, and ridiculing one 
another. If our philosophers were able to discover 
truth, which of them would interest himself about it ? There 
is not one of them who, if he could distinguish truth from 
falsehood, would not prefer his own error to the truth that is 
discovered by another. Where is the philosopher who, for his 
own glory, would not willingly deceive the whole human race ? 
— Rousseau’s Emile : Boole 4, p. 264. 

Where the Wrong Rests as Respects Having Doubts.— That a man 
has doubts — that is not the evil ; all earnest men must expect 
to be tried with doubts. All men who feel with their whole 
souls the value of the truth which is at stake, cannot be satis- 
fied with a “ perhaps.” Why, when all that is true and excellent 
in this world, all that is worth living for, is in that question of 
questions, it is no marvel if we sometimes wish, like Thomas, 
to see the prints of the nails, to know whether Christ be indeed 
our Lord or not. Cold hearts are not anxious enough to doubt. 
Men who love will have their misgivings at times ; that is not 
the evil. But the evil is, when men go on in that languid, doubt- 
ing way, content to doubt, proud of their doubts, morbidly glad 
to talk about them, liking the romantic gloom of twilight, with- 
out the manliness to say, I must and will know the truth. — F* 
W. Robertson : Vol . 3. p. 348. 

The Philosophy of Doubts. — We begin life as unknowing crea- 
tures that have every thing to learn. We grope, and groping 
is doubt; we handle, we question, we guess, we experiment, be- 


456 


INFIDELITY. 


ginning in darkness and stumbling on towards intelligence. We 
are in a doom of activity, and cannot stop thinking — thinking 
everything, knocking against the walls on every side ; trying 
thus to master the problems, and about as often getting mas- 
tered by them. Yeast works in bread scarcely more blindly. 
When I draw out this whole conception of our life as it is, the 
principal wonder, I confess, is that we doubt so little and 
accept so much. 

And, again, it is a fact, disguise it as we can, or deny it as we 
may, that our faculty is itself in disorder. A broken or bent 
telescope will not see anything rightly. A filthy window will 
not bring in even the day as it is. So a mind wrenched from 
its true lines of action or straight perception, discolored and 
smirched by evil, will not see truly, but will put a blurred, mis- 
shapen look on everything. Truths will only be as good as 
errors, and doubts as natural as they. 

Doubters no^er can dissolve or extirpate their doubts by 
inquiry, search, investigation, or any kind of speculative en- 
deavor. They must never go after the truth to merely find it, 
but to practice it and live by it. It is not enough to rally their 
inventiveness, doing nothing to polarize their aim. To be 
simply curious, thinking of this and thinking of that, is only 
a way to multiply doubts ; for in doing it they are, in fact, post- 
poning all the practical rights of truth. They imagine, it may 
be, that they are going, first, to settle their questions, and then, 
at their leisure, to act. As if they were going to get the perfect 
system and complete knowledge of truth before they move an 
inch in doing what they know ! The result is that the chamber 
of their brain is filled with an immense clatter of opinions, ques- 
tions, arguments, that even confound their reason itself. And 
they come out wondering at the discovery, that the more they 
investigate the less they believe ! Their very endeavor mocks 
them, — just as it really ought. (For truth is something to be 
lived, else it might as well not be.) And how shall a mind get 
on finding more truth, save as it takes direction from what it 
gets ; how make farther advances when it tramples what it has 
by neglect? You come upon the hither side of a vast intricate 
forest region, and your problem is to find your way through it. 
Will you stand there inquiring and speculating forty years, ex- 
pecting first to make out the way? or, seeing a few rods into 
it, will you go on as far as you see, and so get ability to see a 


INFIDELITY. 


457 


few rods farther? proceeding in that manner to find out the un- 
known, by advancing practically in the known. — Horace 
Bushnell : Sermons on Living Subjects , pp. 169-170. 

Why Men are Ignorant of Truth. — There are another sort of 
people who want proofs, not because they are out of their 
reach, but because they will not use them ; who, though they 
have riches and leisure enough, and want neither parts nor 
other helps, are yet never the better for them. Their hot pur- 
suit of leisure, or constant drudgery in business, engages 
some men’s thoughts elsewhere ; laziness and indifference in 
general, or a particular aversion for books, study and medita- 
tion, keep others from any serious thoughts at all ; and some 
out of fear that an impartial inquiry would not favor those 
opinions which best suit their prejudices, lives and designs, 
content themselves, without examination, to take upon trust 
what they find convenient and fashionable. Thus most men, 
even of those that might do otherwise, pass their lives without 
an acquaintance with, much less a rational assent to, probabil- 
ities they are concerned to know, though they lie so much 
within their view, that to be convinced of them they need but 
turn their eyes . that way. I will not here mention how unrea- 
sonable this is for men that ever think of a future state, and 
their concernment in it, which no rational man can avoid to do 
sometimes . — Locke : Human Understanding , p. 459. 

A Melancholy Reflection Concerning the British.— It is, indeed, a 
melancholy reflection to consider that the British nation, which 
is now at a greater height of glory for its councils and con- 
quests than it ever was before, should distinguish itself by a 
certain looseness of principles, and a falling off from those 
schemes of thinking which conduce to the happiness and per- 
fection of human nature. This evil comes upon us from the 
works of a few solemn blockheads that meet together, with 
the zeal and seriousness of apostles, to extirpate common 
sense and "propagate infidelity. These are the wretches, who, 
without any show of wit, learning, or reason, publish their 
crude conceptions with an ambition of appearing more wise 
than the rest of mankind, upon no other pretense than that of 
dissenting from them. One gets by heart a catalogue of title- 
pages and editions, and immediately, to become conspicuous, 
declares that he is an unbeliever. Another knows how to 
write a receipt, or cut up a dog, and forthwith argues against 


458 


INFIDELITY. 


the immortality of the soul. I have known many a little wit, in 
the ostentation of his parts, rally the truth of Scripture, who was 
not able to read a chapter in it. These poor wretches talk blas- 
phemy for want of discourse, and are rather the objects of 
scorn or pity, than of our indignation; but the grave disputant 
that reads and writes, and spends all his time in convincing 
himself and the world that he is no better than a brute, ought 
to be whipped out of a government, as a blot to civil society, 
and a defamer of mankind. I love to consider an infidel, 
whether distinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free- 
thinker, in three different lights : in his solitudes, his afflic- 
tions, and his last moments . — Addison : Tattler, N'o. 111. 

Who are the Wen that Set Themselves Up for Free-thinkers ? — The 
persons who now set up for Free-thinkers are such as 
endeavor, by a little trash of words and sophistry, to weaken 
and destroy those very principles, for the vindication of which 
freedom of thought at first became laudable and heroic. 
These apostates from reason and good sense can look at the 
glorious frame of nature without paying an adoration to Him 
that raised it ; can consider the great revolutions in the uni- 
verse without lifting up their minds to that superior Power 
which has the direction of it; can presume to censure the 
Deity in his ways toward men ; can level mankind with the 
beasts that perish; can extinguish in their own minds all the 
pleasing hopes of a future state, and lull themselves into a 
stupid security against the terrors of it. If one were to take 
the word priestcraft out of the mouths of these shallow mon- 
sters, they would be immediately struck dumb. It is by the 
help of this single term that they endeavor to disappoint the 
good works of the most learned and venerable order of men, 
and harden the hearts of the ignorant against the very light 
of nature and the common received notions of mankind. 

I would fain ask a minute philosopher what good he proposes 
to mankind by the publication of his doctrines ? Will they 
make a man a better citizen, or father of a family? a more 
endearing husband, friend, or son? Will they enlarge his 
public or private virtues, or correct any of his frailties or 
vices? What is there either joyful or glorious in such 
opinions ? Do they either refresh or enlarge our thoughts ? 
Do they contribute to the happiness or raise the dignity of 
human nature ? The only good that I have ever heard pre- 


INFIDELITY. 


459 


tended to is, that they banish terrors, and set the mind at ease. 
But whose terrors do they banish? Those of impenitent 
criminals and malefactors, and which, to the good of mankind, 
should be in perpetual terror and alarm. — Sir B. Steele : Tattler, 
Ho. 135. 

M Philosophical Arguments Against Christianity.— I have never 
read, nor heard a philosophic, rational, logical argument 
against Christianity ; nor have I ever seen or heard a rational, 
philosophic or logical argument in favor of any form of skep- 
ticism or infidelity. Jesus Christ was, and is, & person; not a 
thing, not a doctrine, not a theory. Infidelity is not a person, 
not a thing, not a theory. There may be a theory of it, but it 
is not a theory. It is a state of mind, an intellectual or a moral 
imbecility. It is a spirital jaundice, sometimes green and 
sometimes black. They cannot be philosophically, logically, 
rationally compared. They are neither logical nor literal con- 
trasts. The infidel is but the incarnation of a negative idea. 
He is absolutely but a mere negation. He stands to Chris- 
tianity as darkness stands to light. Is darkness anything? Is 
blindness anything but the loss of sight? Is unbelief any- 
thing but the repudiation of evidence ? One might as rationally 
load a cannon to fight against darkness as to dispatch a syllo- 
gism against a chimera. — A. Campbell : Preface to Evidences of 
Christianity. 

A Dismal Mission. — Whaie ver may be thought of particular 
faiths and sects, a belief in a life beyond this world is the only 
thing that pierces through the walls of our prison-house, and 
lets hope shine in upon a scene that would be otherwise bewil- 
dered and desolate. The proselytism of the atheist is indeed 
a dismal mission. That believers, who have each the same 
heaven in prospect, should invite us to join them on their 
respective way to it, is at least a benevolent officiousness ; 
but that he who has no prospect or hope himself, should seek 
for companionship in his road to annihilation, can only be 
explained by that tendency in human creatures to count upon 
each other in their despair as well as their hope. — Thomas 
Moore : Life of Sheridan , Vol. 2, ch. 6. 

What is Atheism as a Theory ? — What is Atheism ? Asa theory, 
with regard to the nature and constitution of the universe, the 
word means either that the mighty something, the all, was pro- 


460 


INFIDELITY. 


duced out of nothing, nobody knows how, and goes on 
producing itself into something, nobody knows how ; or that it 
has existed forever, and will exist forever, as a mighty, confused 
complex of something that acts, called force, and something 
that is acted on, called matter ; but it takes its shape from no 
intelligent or designing cause, merely from blind chance ; or at 
least, that it is a self-existent combination of forces and the 
results of forces, of which, in their unity, no intelligible 
account can be given. 

• Now, the first observation that occurs to one, on this view 
of the constitution of this wonderful structure of things called 
the world, is, that on the broad view of the ages and cycles of 
human speculation it is a strikingly exceptive, abnormal, and 
monstrous type of reasonable thought. It seems, on the first 
blush of the matter, to bear somewhat the same proportion to 
the general current of human thinking that dypsomania and 
other odd conditions of morbid sensibility do to the normal 
state of the human nerves. It is a doctrine so averse from the 
general current of human sentiment that the unsophisticated 
mass of mankind instinctively turn away from it, as the other 
foxes did from that vulpine brother, who, having lost his tail in a 
trap, tried to convince the whole world of foxes that the bushy 
appendage in the posterior region was a deformity of which all 
high-minded members of the vulpine aristocracy should get 
Tid of as soon as possible . — John Stuart Blackic : Natural 
History of Atheism , p. 4. 

How Can a Man Arrive at the Discovery of No God?— The wonder 
then turns on the great process by which a man could grow to 
the immense intelligence which can know that there is no God. 
What ages and what lights are requisite for this attainment ! 
This intelligence involves the very attributes of Divinity, while 
a God is denied. For, unless this man is omnipresent, unless 
he is at this moment in every place in the universe, he cannot 
know but there may be in some place manifestations of a Deity, 
by which even he would be overpowered. If he does not know 
absolutely every agent in the universe, the one that he does not 
know may be God. If he is not himself the chief agent of the 
universe, and does not know what is so, that which is so may 
be God. If he is not in absolute possession of all the propo- 
sitions that constitute universal truth, the one which he wants 
may be, that there is a God. If he cannot with certainty assign 


INFIDELITY. 


461 


the cause of all that he perceives to exist, that cause may be 
God. If he does not know everything that has been done in 
the immeasurable ages that are past, some things may have 
been done by a God. Thus, unless he knows all things, that is, 
precludes all other divine existence by being God himself, he 
cannot know that the Being whose existence he rejects, does 
not exist. But he must know that he does not exist, else he 
deserves equal contempt and compassion for the temerity 
with which he firmly avows his rejection, and acts accordingly. 
— Foster’s Essays : 1 5th Ed ., p. 35. 

Braden’s Review of Underwood’s Positions.— The teaching of na- 
ture is that man is a religious being, religion is health, super- 
stition is disease, and atheism is suicide. The atheist is like 
the mad-man, who would pluck out his eye to get rid of a stye 
on the lid. Christianity is a healthy use of man’s nature. It 
cures disease, superstition, and saves from suicide, atheism. 
Then it is assumed that to remove religion, to remove tho 
highest expression and declaration of his supreme law of evo- 
lution, to extirpate what has in all human experience been the 
regnant element of man’s nature, is to restore it to health. It 
will then be able to receive food and assimilate it. How, we ask, 
what truth can man receive after rejecting religion that he can- 
not receive now? What influence will rejecting religion have 
on his receiving a single truth that the infidel offers ? The offer 
is like that of a quack, who, learning that a person has perverted 
food, especially that containing carbon and saccharine matter, 
should advise him to eliminate out of his food these elements, 
most essential of all to life and strength, that he may be able to 
receive and assimilate minor elements. Common sense would 
say that he should make a right use of these vitally essential 
elements, and not eliminate them. It would say that the ele- 
ments left would be useless without the uses met by the ele- 
ments it is proposed to eliminate. So in this case we advise to 
make right use of the regnant element in man’s nature, relig- 
ion, and it will aid in a right use of all the infidel prates so 
much about. 

« For the doctrine of regeneration, or the new birth, we pro- 
pose to substitute general information respecting the laws of 
health and reproduction, so as to insure the generation of 
human beings under circumstances favorable to their physical 
and moral development, thereby rendering regeneration un- 


/ 


462 


INFIDELITY. 


necessary. In short, we would have human beings born right 
the first time, so that nobody would imagine that they need to 
be born again.” Now, that is gross misrepresentation. The 
Christian can study the laws of being, and use all the means 
and knowledge that the materialist can have, and have his chil- 
dren born as perfectly as the materialist. There is nothing in 
Christianity that stands in the way. It, by its pure teachings 
in regard to this relation and parental responsibility, secures 
such results. After our children are born, Christianity gives 
them a guide in accordance with their nature. It regenerates 
them when born wrong. Materialism cannot do this. When 
he has done all he can by natural law, children will need Chris- 
tianity and its regeneration. “For prayer we substitute self-reli- 
ance and trust in the universality and uniformity of natural law. 
No manna comes by prayer; so we depend upon our own exer- 
tions for food. The lightning is not turned from its course by 
clasped and uplifted hands ; so we look to the lightning-rod, 
rather than to the ‘Lord,’ for safety and protection in a 
tempest on land or at sea.” This is gross misrepresentation 
again. Prayer is not in conflict with the uniformity of nature’s 
laws. This whole materialistic misrepresentation rises no 
higher than food and material law and matter. Prayer is a 
part of a perfect moral government of God over his rational 
creatures, in which the matter that this writer deifies is the 
servant of spirit that he seems ignorant of. The Christian 
labors for food, and uses the lightning-rod as much as he does. 
Christianity does not conflict with this. This entire sentence 
is so gross a misrepresentation as to be a falsehood. The 
Christian has every use and knowledge of nature that the 
materialist has, and in the spiritual and religious world he has 
truth and blessings that the materialist ignores. He can make 
a higher and better use of nature than the materialist; for he 
can study and believe One who created and rules it. 

“ Instead of holding up to lazy and selfish people a heaven of 
idleness and psalm-singing in another world, as one would hold 
up a piece of meat for a dog to jump at, we teach the duty of 
personal effort on the part of all to realize our dreams of a true 
Heaven in this world— the only world (Christians, Spiritists and 
Free Religionists to the contrary notwithstanding) that any- 
body knows anything about.” This is full of misrepresentations. 
Christianity does not offer heaven to lazy or selfish people. It 


INFIDELITY. 


463 


enjoins self-denial, self-sacrificing toil for others, as the way to 
reach heaven, because the way to fit one for it. The idea of 
such characters reaching heaven is repugnant to its entire 
spirit and teaching. It does not teach that eternity in Heaven 
will be spent in idleness and psalm-singing. I do not read it 
in the New Testament. The idea that Christianity presents 
Heaven to such persons in such a way is an insult, and can 
only be excused on the ground of ignorance, which itself is in- 
excusable. The Christian can make a heaven of this world as 
well as the materialist, and, indeed, he alone can. Where did 
this writer get his ideas of morality and goodness and self- 
sacrifice, that will make a heaven of this earth ? Certainly not 
in an evolution of irrational matter and force, by means of a 
brutal, selfish struggle for life, in which the strongest survives ? 
What is the materialist doing to make a heaven of this world ? 
Where are his missionaries'? his Young Men’s Christian Asso- 
ciations, Sunday Schools, reformatory associations, and move- 
ments to make the world better? Where are his martyr philan- 
thropists? Boasting that they have the numbers and wealth, 
they do not spend for humanity one dollar where the Christian, 
so caricatured in this article, spends tens of thousands. Mak- 
ing a heaven of this earth, as Christianity proposes to do, and 
in the only way it can be done, is the way to prepare for the 
future world ; and preparing for the future world is the way to 
make a heaven of this world, just as making a right use of youth 
is the way to prepare for manhood. How would it sound to 
say to the child : Instead of holding up a noble manhood, as a 
piece of meat for a dog to jump at, before your lazy inclinations, 
we will teach you to make all you can of youth ? Can a noble 
manhood encourage idleness ? Is not preparing for it the right 
use of youth? % 

u Instead of attempting to frighten children of various ages 
with the wicked vagary of a lake of fire and brimstone, in which 
God will punish His children eternally, for their mistakes and 
fallacies, we endeavor to deter men from wrong-doing by show- 
ing that nature punishes everywhere those who disobey her 
mandates, that she judges the offender without the delay or 
circumlocution of court trials, and executes her sentence with 
simplicity, directness and the most rigid impartiality.” The 
Christian knows and believes in the laws of nature, as 
established by God, as much as the materialist. He knows 


464 


INFIDELITY. 


men do not receive in this world all the punishment due their 
crimes, in a majority of cases. He believes in a righteous ruler 
who rules in the moral world, and will, with infinite wisdom, 
render to each man according to his works. But let us take 
out that convenient personification and read it as the mate- 
rialist ought to present it, “ We deter men from wrong-doing by 
showing that blind, irrational matter and force everywhere 
punish those who disobey their mandates, that they judge the 
offender and execute their sentence with simplicity, direct- 
ness and impartiality.” In such system, can there be any 
mandates, judgment or sentence, or execution of sentence ? 
There is a machine of blind matter and force. Man cheats it 
out of all the gratification he can and avoid being crushed. — 
Clarlc Braden : Problem of Problems . 

Swing’s Dissection of Ingcrsoll. — We perceive at once that these 
addresses do not offer us any system of philosophy for woman, 
or child, or State, and therefore they cannot aspire to be any 
valuable Mentor to tell each young Telemachus how to live. 
They are the speeches of a lawyer retained by one client of a 
large case. Men trained in a profession come by degrees into 
the profession’s channel, and flow only in the one direction, 
and always between the same banks. The master of a learned 
profession at last becomes its slave. He who follows faithfully 
any calling wears at last a soul of that calling’s shape. You 
remember the death scene of the poor old schoolmaster. He 
had assembled the boys and girls in the winter mornings and 
had dismissed them winter evenings after sundown, and had 
done this for fifty long years. One winter Monday he did not 
appear. Death had struck his old and feeble pulse ; but, dying, 
his mind followed its beautiful but narrow river-bed, and his 
last words were : “ It is growing dark — the school is dismissed 
— let the girls pass out first.” Very rarely does the man in the 
pulpit, or at the bar, or in statesmanship, escape this molding 
hand of his pursuit. We are all clay in the hands of that 
potter which is called a pursuit. A pursuit is seldom an ocean 
of water ; it is more commonly a canal. 

A Lawyer’s Art. — But if there be a class of men more modi- 
fied than others in language and forms of speech, the 
lawyers compose such a class, for it is never their busi- 
ness to present both sides. It is their especial duty so to 
arrange a part of the facts as that they shall seem to be the 


INFIDELITY. 


465 


whole facts, and next to their power of presenting a cause 
must come their power to conceal all aspects unfavorable to 
their purpose. A philosopher must see and set forth at once 
both sides of all questions, but a lawyer must learn to see the 
one side of a case, for there is another man expressly employed 
to see the reverse of the shield. But few of us are philoso- 
phers. When we wish to exhibit something, we instantly cut 
off all light except that which will fall upon our goods. If we 
are to display only a yard of silk, we will veil the sun and move 
about to find the right position, and then light a little more gas,, 
that the fields, and hills, and heavens may all withdraw, and 
permit us to see the fold of a bride’s dress. Thus all the pro- 
fessions, honored by being called learned, do more or less cut 
off the light from all things except the fabric that is being 
unfolded by their skillful fingers. 

Men of intense emotional power like Mr. Ingersoll, and 
men who, like him, have hearts as full of colors as a 
painter’s shop, are wont, beyond common, to pour their 
passion upon one object rather than diffuse it all over the world. 
These can awaken, and entertain, and shake, and unsettle, but 
then, after all is over, we all must seek for final guides men who 
are calmer and who spread gentler tints with their brush. I am, 
therefore, of the opinion that none of us should follow any one 
man, but rather all men ; should seek that general impression, 
that wide-reaching common-sense, which knows little of ecstacy 
and little of despair. These “Addresses” under notice are 
wonderful concentrations of wit, and fun, and tears, and logic, 
but concentrations upon minor parts. They are severe upon a 
little group of men, upon literalists and old Popes, and old 
monks, but they do not weigh and measure fully the religion 
of such a being as Jesus Christ, nor touch the ideas and 
actions of the human race away from these fading forms of 
human nature. 

Seven mistakes of Moses Left Out. — These addresses do injustice 
to the Hebrew history. A lawyer has a right to be one-sided 
and narrow when he is presenting the cause of his client, but 
when he is addressing a public upon a religious, or political, or 
social question, narrowness in his discourse must be considered 
an infirmity, or else an act of injustice. These speeches betray 
either unconscious narrowness or willful injustice. But Mr. 
Ingersoll is the embodiment of sincerity, according to those 
Dl 


466 


INFIDELITY. 


who enjoy Iris acquaintance, and therefore we must conclude 
that the cast of his mind is such that it is led hither and thither 
by that narrowness which belongs no more to a high Calvinist 
than to a high infidel. If the lecture upon “ Moses ” had been 
more thoughtful, it would have confessed that there were 
several forms of the man u Moses/’ — the historic u Moses,” the 
Hebrew “ Moses,” and the Calvinistic “ Moses ; ” and then, 
after this concession, he might have assailed the “ Calvinistic 
Moses.” * * * * But if the addresses had been 

broad, and spoken for that larger audience called humanity, 
they would have asked us to mark the mistakes of the Moses 
of Hebrew times and of common history. But they did not 
dream of this. Standing in the presence of one of the grandest 
figures of Egyptian and Hebrew antiquity, Mr. Ingersoll failed 
to see this personage, and permitted nothing to come upon his 
field of vision except those sixteenth century theologians who 
distorted alike the mission of Moses and of Christ, and even 
of the Almighty. To set forth the mistakes of the historic 
u Moses ” would not be any easy task. One doing this would 
be compelled to ask us to mark the blunders of a leader who 
planned freedom for slaves ; who bore complainings from an 
ignorant people until he won the fame of unusual meekness, 
one who did in reality what infidels only have dreamed of 
doing — living and dying for the people; the mistakes of one 
whose ten laws are still the fundamental ideas of a 
State, of one who organized a nation which lived and 
flourished for 1,500 years ; the mistakes of one who divested 
the idea of God of bestiality and began to clothe it 
with the notions of wisdom and justice, and even tender- 
ness ; the follies of one who established industry and educa- 
tion, and a higher form of religion, and gave the nation holding 
these virtues such an impulse that in the hour of dissolving it 
produced a Jesus Christ and the twelve Apostles ; and thus did 
more in its death than Atheism could achieve in all the eons of 
geology. Seven mistakes of Moses left out ! 

There is, it is true, a time and a place for irony, but after it 
has done its work amid the accidental of a time or a place, there 
remains yet much to be studied by the sober intellect and loved 
by the heart which really cares for the useful and the true. It 
is essentially a small matter that some poetic mind, some 
Froissart or some Herodotus, came along perhaps after the 


INFIDELITY. 


467 


reigns of David and Solomon, and gathered up all the truths of 
old Hebrew tradition, and all the legends, too, and wove them 
together, for out of such entanglements the essential ideas 
generally rise up just as noble pine trees at last rise up above 
the brambles and thickets at their base, and evermore stand in 
the full presence of rain, and air, and sun. Above the bram- 
bles and thorn of legend, at which the narrow eye may laugh, 
there rises up from the Mosaic soil a growth of moral truth 
that catches at last full sunshine and full breeze; a growth that 
will long make a good shadow for the graves of Christian and 
infidel beneath. The errors of legend are so unimportant that 
oven a Divine Book may carry them. 

His Addresses Defective. — It will thus appear that the method 
of the addresses is very defective. It is not a wide survey of 
a two-thousand-year period in human civilization, a period 
when the Hebrews were making imperishable the good of the 
Egyptians who were dying from vices and despotism, but is 
only the ramble of a satirist having a sharp eye for defects and 
a most ready tongue. All the by-gone periods may be passed 
over in two manners. We may go forth for our laughter or 
for our pensiveness and wisdom. Juvenal saw old Borne full of 
dissolute men and women. Yirgil saw it full of literature. 
Tacitus found it not destitute of patriots and heroes ; and when 
Juvenal found the husbands all debauchees, and the wives all 
hypocrites, there the most calm and elegant historians found the 
most excellent Agricola, and found a wife of spotless fame in 
the daughter Domitia. Thus in the very generations in which 
the lampoons of Juvenal found only vice, behold we see 
beauty and virtue in full bloom around the homes of Tacitus, 
and Agricola, and Pliny. Thus all the fields of human thought 
lie open to the invasion of those who wish to mock, and of 
those who wish to admire. And beyond doubt when Mr. 
Ingersoll shall have uttered his last thought over the Mistakes 
of Moses, some other form of intellect could glean in the 
same field, and leave covered with the truths of Moses, a 
nobler and larger tablet. 

Swing Imitates Him. — Permit me now, in imitation of the style 
of these addresses, to ask you to look at the seventeenth 
century: Why, It all drips in blood! Horror upon horrors! 
The King of Persia put to death some of the Boyal family, and 
put out the eyes of all the rest— even the eyes of infants. 


468 


INFIDELITY. 


Bussia begins her cruel oppression of Poland. Prussia, the 
hope of Europe, is desolated by war, which never lifted its 
black cloud for thirty years. In this wretched century came 
the massacre of Prague, and the forcible banishment of 30,000 
Protestant families. Allowing five persons to a family, it will 
thus appear that 150,000 were driven from their homes and 
country. Further south, in France, a few years before, 700,000 
Protestants had been murdered in twenty-four hours. After- 
ward came the licentious court of Louis XIV ; while over in 
England noblemen and women were being beheaded or other- 
wise slain in dreadful numbers. The beautiful Queen Mary ia 
beheaded just as the century begins, and Essex is beheaded in 
its full opening. And in its close France re-enters the scene, 
revokes the edict of Xantes, and sends into exile 800,000 of her 
best citizens. 

Then Shows the Other Side. — Thus dragged along tne seven- 
teenth century, as it would seem, bleeding, and weeping, and 
gasping in perpetual dying. What a picture ! Amazing, indeed, 
but narrow and false! I have been thinking only of the 
“mistakes” of a time. Just look at that century again with 
a wider survey and, a happier heart, and lo ! we see in it a 
matchless line of immortal worthies. There flourished Gusta- 
vus, laying the foundations of our liberty ; there lived Grotius, 
writing down the holiest principles of duty; there we see 
Galileo inventing the telescope, and beholding the starry 
sky ; there sits Kepler, finding the highest laws of astronomy ; 
near these are the French preachers, Bossuet, Fenelon and 
Massilon, whose fame has not been equaled; there, too, Pascal 
and Corneille. But this is not all. It is not one-third the 
splendor of that one epoch, for, cross the Channel, and behold, 
you meet Shakspeare, and Lord Bacon, and Milton, and Locke, 
and while these divine minds are composing their books, 
Cromwell is overthrowing despots, and a Bepublic springs up 
as by enchantment. Thus the seventeenth century, which 
awhile ago seemed only a period that a kind heart might wish 
stricken from history, now comes back to us as the sublime 
dawn of poetry, and science, and eloquence, and liberty. 

The truth is, we must move through the present and the past 
with both eyes wide open, and with a mind willing to know all, 
and to draw a conclusion from the whole combined cloud of 
witnesses. The author of the addresses does not do this. He 


INFIDELITY. 


469 


does not make a wide survey nor draw conclusions from widely- 
scattered facts ; and hence, after he has spoken about the hor- 
rors of the Mosaic age , or of the Church, there remains that 
age or that Church emptying rich treasures into the general 
civilization, purifying the barbarous ages, awaking the intellect, 
stimulating the arts, inspiring good works, elevating the life of 
the living, by setting before man a God and a future existence. 
Our Christianity has a Hebrew origin. The Sermon on the 
Mount was begun by Moses. 

What IngersolPs Eloquence is Like.— The eloquence of Mr. 
Ingersoll is much like the art of Hogarth or John Leech— an 
acute, and witty, and interesting art, but very limited in its 
range. Hogarth was without a rival in his ability to picture the 
“ mistakes ” of marriage, and of a “ Rake’s Progress,” the pecu- 
liarity of “ Beer Lane ” and “ Gin Lane ; ” and his art was 
legitimate in its field, but its field was narrow, and took no 
notice of the eternal beauty of things as painted by Rubens or 
Raphael. After Hogarth had said all he could see and believe 
about marriage, there stood the holy relation in its historic 
greatness, filling millions of homes with its peace and friend- 
ship, notwithstanding the mirth-provoking pencil. Thus the 
ideas of “ Moses,” and “ Church,” and “ Heaven,” and “ God,” 
lie before Mr. Ingersoll to be pictured by his skillful derision, 
but after the artist has drawn his little Puritanic Hebrew and 
his absurd Heaven, and has painted his little gods, and has 
limned his own Papal Heaven and Hell, another scene opens, 
and there untarnished are the deep things of right and wrong, 
the immortal hopes of man, and a Heavenly Father which 
cannot be placed upon a jester’s canvas. 

John Leech found the weak points in all English high and 
low life. The fashions, and sports, and entertainments, and 
the current politics, underwent for a generation the torture of 
his pictures, his sketches, his cartoons, but the moment the 
laugh had ended, the homes of England, the happy social life 
of rich and poor, the learning and wisdom of her statesmen 
were back in their place just as the sun is in his place after a 
noisy thunderstorm has passed by .—David Swing : Mistakes of 
Ingersoll. 

Powers on “Hardness of Heart,” “Polygamy,” Etc.— The “hard- 
ness of heart” referred to is evidently the dullness of the 
intellectual and moral sense that characterized the almost 


470 


INFIDELITY. 


savage slaves of the Egyptians when they came np out of 
Egypt. Instead of imposing on them an ethical system per- 
fectly complete and perfectly unintelligible to them in their 
degraded condition, Moses, under direction of divine wisdom,, 
gave them a moral law which they could understand, and which 
would develop in them a capacity for something purer and 
higher. 

Polygamy was tolerated, not because it was the ideal system ; 
not because the deity of the Hebrews could devise no other, 
but because polygamy is the natural intermediate station 
between promiscuity and monogamy. God chose to make a 
civilized people out of the Jews, not by His creative fiat, but 
by operating through natural laws of sociology. In due time, 
when men were prepared for it, the law of permanent and 
monogamous marriage was promulgated, but it was in advance 
of public sentiment, as is shown by the fact that when Christ,, 
in the passage above quoted, forbade free divorce, and pro- 
claimed the sanctity of the marital relation, the disciples sug- 
gested that if that was the law it was better not to marry. 

So slavery was tolerated under the Mosaic law. But servi- 
tude for a short term of years was substituted for permanent 
and hereditary servitude, and the law threw some protection 
about the person of the slave. The Mosaic dispensation is- 
not responsible for a defence of slavery. It tolerated an inter- 
mediate state between barbarism and civilization. 

A fact of vast importance to notice is that this Mosaic 
system contained within itself the seeds which, when humanity 
had outgrown the old dispensation, would mature into a new 
dispensation so far in advance of human attainments, that after 
nearly nineteen centuries the human race has not begun to 
catch upon it. Christ expounded the Old Testament references 
to Himself, beginning with Moses. When Sinai had reduced 
society to order, and stamped out paganism, then Calvary 
came and appealed to all that was highest and purest in man. 
Even at this late day there are not many souls that really com- 
prehend the full meaning of Calvary and whose lives give 
evidence of that fact. When any considerable portion of the 
human race has received all that Calvary can confer, a new 
dispensation may be expected. 

The Mosaic Law Adapted to its Times.— In this sense the Mosaic 
dispensation was perfect and complete. As promulgated on 


INFIDELITY. 


471 


Mount Sinai, it was adapted only to a certain low condition of 
mankind. But it contained a vital principle, which enabled it 
to expand as fast as civilization advanced. Starting with the 
Decalogue, it developed the penitential psalms and the noble 
exhortations of the prophets, and finally the Beatitudes. Begin- 
ning with a catalogue of penalties, it in course of time developed 
sorrow for sin, and at last that love to God which withholds 
from sin. This system of religion has developed faster than 
civilization has advanced. The Israelites at the foot of Mount 
Sinai probably knew something of the wrongfulness of murder, 
theft and adultery. But, to-day, in spite of great moral 
advances — to-day, nineteen centuries after Christ — how much 
does the human race really know about “ hungering and thirst- 
ing after righteousness ? ” Let the foolish declaration that we 
have outgrown Christianity come from those who have been 
filled, and who still want something more. 

The Decalogue is by no means the complete moral code that 
it is often represented to be, and it would be singularly out of 
place in a Christian Church were it not that, even to-day, and in 
the United States, there are many persons incapable of com- 
prehending the Beatitudes which comprehend all there is in 
the Decalogue, and vastly more. The seventh commandment 
does not apply to crimes, both participants in which are unmar- 
ried, and the Mosaic law treated the seduction of an unbe- 
trothed bondmaid as a trivial offence, sufficiently atoned for by 
the sacrifice of a ram. The seduction of a free maid, if she was 
not betrothed, was atoned for by marriage. It was on account 
of the “hardness of their hearts,” their infancy in ethics, that 
this easy-going statute regarding the sexes was enacted. But 
Christ said : 

Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, “ Thou shalt not 
commit adultery;” but I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a 
woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in 
his heart. (Matt, v: 27, 28.) 

The Decalogue said, “Thou shalt not kill,” but Jesus Christ 
added to this as follows : 

Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in 
danger of the j udgment. (Matt, v : 22.) 

The Decalogue forbade the bearing of false witness ; it was 
silent as to ordinary mendacity. In the New Testament this 
law is extended to cover all untruthfulness. 


472 


INFIDELITY. 


Its Purpose. — The purpose of the Mosaic law was to start the 
Israelites on the path of spiritual enlightenment. It was a 
provisional system, superseded at the right time by Christian- 
ity. The sacrifices were fines imposed on the guilty. They 
were also daily reminded of the existence of God, and the blood 
pouring from the altar taught the serious nature and fatal con- 
sequences of sin as nothing else would. Of course, to a set of 
modern sophists, who deny the existence of sin, the sacrifices 
are simply meaningless, revolving spectacles ; but the man who 
hasn’t studied the subject enough to understand the meaning 
of the Hebrew sacrifices is estopped from discussing them in 
public. 

Barbarities of Mosaic System.— The barbarities of the Mosaic 
system form a pet subject of denunciation by gentlemen who 
have a repugnance to study, coupled with a mania for de- 
livering lectures, when the latter can be done at a pecuniary 
profit. If a man thinks it just as well to worship the sun or a 
bull as to worship Jehovah, of course he will regard the penal- 
ties denounced against idolatry as tyrannical and barbarous* 
But no man, unless he has a purpose to accomplish thereby, 
can shut his eyes to the barrier that idolatry places in the way 
of mental or moral progress, or both. The interests of the human 
race demanded that paganism should be rooted out somewhere, 
if not everywhere. The promise to Abraham, that in his seed 
should all the nations of the earth be blessed, has been ful- 
filled, but that has been accomplished only by the most rigor- 
ous hostility to paganism among the Jews. In spite of all the 
stern laws of Moses, Israel again and again relapsed into pa- 
ganism ; yet it was an absolute necessity that if what we now 
know as civilization was ever to come, paganism must in some 
corner of the world be stamped out, and the way prepared for 
Christianity. To teach the Isralites what a moral contagion 
was idolatry, they had to be taught that it was a physical con- 
tagion, contaminating everything connected with the idolator. 
Had not this been done, the Israelites would have remained, 
like all the rest of the world, immersed in the unspeakably un- 
clean worship of Baal and Astarte and Moloch. Cost what it 
might, the ravages of the pestilence had to be checked some- 
where. 

Wars of Israelites. — Of course, the wars of the Israelites and 
the annihilation of certain tribes are held to be horrible 


INFIDELITY. 


473 


cruelties by the sophists of the present day. But we are dis- 
tinctly told that it was for their extraordinary wickedness that 
these tribes were exterminated. We are again and again told 
-that it was for the wickedness of the Amalekites that their 
destruction was commanded. We get some glimpses of the 
unmentionable vileness of some of these Canaanitish tribes. 
The fact was that they were ulcers on the body of the human 
race which had to be cut out. Possibly the innocent suffered 
with the guilty, and possibly there were no innocent except 
the infants, whom it would have been no mercy to save after 
fheir unclean parents were destroyed. It is probable that the 
moral taint had so rooted itself in the physical system that, 
had the children been spared, they would have inevitably 
developed into adults as unclean as their parents. The 
passages sometimes quoted to show that Jehovah was vindica- 
tive, are passages aimed at sin. The most ample amnesty to 
the repentant is promised from one end of Genesis to the 
other end of Revelation. The people who denounce the divine 
government, as manifest in the Old Testament, either deny 
that there is any such thing as sin, or, which is often the case, 
they have admirable reasons for being angry, because sin is 
punished. The gentlemen who denounce the destruction of 
Sodom are necessarily apologists for the Sodomists. 

When malignancy is charged against Jehovah it is important 
to remember that the presence of five righteous persons would 
have saved Sodom. There was only one righteous person, and 
not only was he enabled to escape, but he secured immunity 
for his family. Nineveh was spared because the people repented. 
The Israelites were delivered from their enemies when they 
forsook their sins. On the other hand, Nathan’s rebuke to 
David is a matter of record, and Solomon’s licentiousness was 
punished by the revolt of Jeroboam and the ten tribes. The 
statement that Jehovah disregarded distinctions of right and 
wrong, or treated the innocent and guilty alike, or took pleasure 
in the death even of the wicked, is false, and known to be so 
by the persons who make it. The very sentiment of humanity 
which prompts certain persons to denounce the divine govern- 
ment of the Jews, is found only where Christianity, the legit- 
imate successor of Judaism, prevails. 

The Massacres. — What are denounced as massacres committed 
by the Israelites were judicial executions performed under the 


474 


INFIDELITY. 


orders of the only court in the universe which has perfect 
information of the cases tried before it, and which is perfectly 
free from weaknesses. To object to the judgment one must 
either show that the condemned were innocent, which at this 
late day cannot be shown, or one must show that the crimes 
were less heinous than the court held them to be, which is to 
become an apologist for crimes of every character, some of 
which are not even to be named. It is also to be remem- 
bered that the divine government is the creator of society, 
instead of the creature of society, as is human govern- 
ment. The former is, therefore, not to be judged precisely 
as the latter is, even though abstract justice is the same in 
Heaven that it is on earth. The charge of vindictiveness is 
absolutely without foundation ; and, by the way, of all the 
nations known to the Jews the one we might suppose them 
most hostile to is the Egyptian, for it was in Egypt that the 
Israelites were enslaved and maltreated. Yet the divine com- 
mand, coming from Moses, was that the Israelites should in no 
case oppress the Egyptians, and the reason was that they were 
once sojourners in the land of Egypt, the very reason we might 
suppose why they should be especially bitter toward the 
Egyptians. 

Dense Ignorance. — There is a good deal of dense ignorance or 
able-bodied mendacity in circulation regarding the ethics of 
the Hew Testament. Jesus Christ and His apostles upheld 
neither political nor domestic despotism. But it is a fact 
which lecturers should understand that civil order is the first 
step toward civilization. Despotism is more conducive to 
civilization than anarchy is. Furthermore, when Paul wrote his 
epistles the Boman officials suspected all Christians of being 
hostile to the government, and it was especially necessary 
that the Koman power should understand by the loyalty of 
the Christians that He whom they called their king was a 
spiritual sovereign, and not a rival of the emperor. 

Husband and Wife.— What Paul, at a particular time, wrote to 
a particular Church is by no means necessarily a universal law. 
What is particularly to be noted is, that the exhortations to 
obedience on the part of the citizen, the wife, the child and the 
servant are coupled with, and conditioned on exhortations to 
the ruler, the husband, the parent and the master, which certain 
uncandid and irrational persons, some of whom are inside the 


INFIDELITY. 


475 


Church, and some of whom are outside of it, are careful to 
ignore. In Ephesians v : 22, Paul commands wives to submit 
themselves to their husbands, but in the twenty-fifth verse, 
husbands are commanded to love their wives as Christ loves 
His Church. How, if the husband fulfills his part of the 
mutual obligation, the wife’s submission will not be of a very 
menial character. In Ephesians vi : 1, children are commanded 
to obey their parents, but in the fourth verse fathers are 
commanded not to provoke their children to wrath, but to 
bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. 
In the next verse servants are commanded to obey their 
masters, but in the ninth verse we read, “And, ye masters, 
do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening, know- 
ing that your Master also is in Heaven ; neither is there respect 
of person with Him.” In Hebrews xiii : 17, we read, “ Obey 
them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves ; for 
they watch for your souls as they that must give account.” 
The command to obey rules is conditioned on the discharge 
of their duties by the rulers. 

How, in omitting one-half of each double command, and on 
the strength of the other half arraigning Christianity as the 
ally of domestic and political tyranny, modern “free thought” 
is accomplishing a great work, is it not? The distinguishing 
characteristic of “ free thought ” seems to be that it is thought 
freed from all subservience to facts. 

Off the Track. — Theology has made many shipwrecks by an 
excess of a priori reasoning, and by reasoning deductively 
when the means of reasoning inductively exist. But what is 
termed materialism is habitually doing the same thing, if it can 
make a point against Christianity by so doing. The enemies of 
Calvinism have denounced it because it promoted immorality. 
Yet a severer code of morals would be difficult to find than 
that maintained by the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenant- 
ers, and the French Hugenots, all Calvinists. Would it not 
be just as rational to judge Calvinism by its fruits as to judge 
its fruits by Calvinism ? 

When man has argued from the Hew Testament that Chris- 
tianity must be the ally of despotism, and then looks about 
him and sees that civil liberty is not known outside of Christian 
lands, and has its fullest development in England and America, 
where Christianity in its simplest forms prevail, and where 


476 


INFIDELITY. 


there are the fewest barriers between the human soul and the 
New Testament itself; when he has argued from the New Tes- 
tament to show that Christianity is inimical to the best interests 
of womanhood, and then looks around and sees womanhood 
honored only in Christian countries, constantly employed by 
and honored in the Church, must it not occur to him with 
painful force that he is a good deal off the track ? 

It would not be necessary to remind philosophers of the fact, 
but it is necessary to remind sophists that the Jews did a good 
many things that the Mosaic dispensation is not responsible 
for, and that it is mere idiocy to hold Christianity responsible 
for everything done by individuals or associations in its name. 
The man who cannot discriminate between the legitimate 
results of a system, and the abuses grafted on to it by its 
professed adherents, is plainly unfit to debate philosophical 
questions. 

If people made half the effort to understand the Bible that 
they make to discard it, they wouldn’t be so funny as they are 
now, but they would know more. — Fred. Ferry Powers : Mis- 
takes of Ingersoll. 

Some Specimens of Unfairness.— In proof of my statement that 
the lecture does not treat the topic which it professes to dis- 
cuss fairly, I offer these specimens as evidence: 

The first specimen is: Attributing to Moses language and 
statements not to be found in any of his writings. Speaking 
of Moses, he says: “The gentleman who wrote it (Genesis) be- 
gins by telling us that God made it (the world) out of nothing.” 
And then he proceeds to ridicule the idea. But Moses says 
neither that nor anything like it. The lecturer thus misrepre- 
sents the very first sentence in the Pentateuch. What Moses 
says is, that “ In the beginning God created the heavens and 
the earth.” What he created them out of, or when “in the be- 
ginning” was, he does not say. The simple thought is that the 
heavens and the earth were not self-evolved, but were created 
by the Omnipotent Jehovah. 

“You recollect,” he says, “that the gods came down and 
made love to the daughters of men,” etc. Where does Moses 
say that! Plenty of that kind of talk in Grecian and Boman 
mythology, but what has that to do with “The Mistakes of 
Moses?” “They built a tower (Babel) to reach the heavens 
and climb into the abodes of the gods.” Another of the Colo- 


INFIDELITY. 


477 


nel’s mistakes. The Tower of Babel was not built for any such 
purpose. From the frequent references of this kind to the gods 
in connection with the religion of Moses, it looks as if the lec- 
turer was not aware that the Jews were not particularly in favor 
of idolatry. Again he says : “ There is not one word in the Old 
Testament about woman except words of shame and humiliation. 
It did not take the pains to record the death of the mother of 
us all. I have no respect for any book that does not treat 
woman as the equal of man.” 

It is true that Moses does not record the death “of the mother 
of us all ;” but it is also true that the first account of the burial 
of any person in the book of Genesis is that of a woman, Sarah, 
the wife of Abraham. Moses simply says of Adam : “ The father 
of us all.” “And he died ;” and in a similar summary manner 
are all the other men disposed of; but when it comes to this 
woman Sarah, a special lot has to be purchased for her, and 
secured to the family, so that her remains might not be dis- 
turbed ; and even now in remembrance of the cave of the field 
in which she was buried, a certain part of our modern cemete- 
ries is called Machpelah. By the side of this fact how does the 
declaration look that “there is not one word in the Old Testa- 
ment about women, except words of shame and humiliation?” 
Suppose I turn the tables upon the lecturer, and say, I have no 
respect for any book that does not treat man as the equal of 
woman. My words, if applied to the Bible, would be hardly 
less libelous than his. 

The Flood and The Ark. — My second specification is that he 
not only makes Moses say what he does not say, but he 
frequently misrepresents what he does say. I name these par- 
ticulars : First, in speaking of the flood, he gives the impres- 
sion that according to the Scriptural account, all the water 
that covered the earth and inundated it came out of the clouds 
in the form of rain. He says : “And then it began to rain, 
and it kept on raining until the water went twenty-nine feet 
over the highest mountains. How deep were these waters? 
About five and a half miles. How long did it rain ? Forty 
days. How much did it have to rain a day? About 800 feet.” 
How, what are the facts ? In the verse which precedes the 
one which says, “And the rain was upon the earth forty days 
and forty nights,” we have this record (Gen., vii : 2). “In the 
600th year of HoalPs life, in the second month, the 17th day of 


478 


INFIDELITY. 


the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great 
deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.” 
Why did not the lecturer mention this statement of the ‘‘break- 
ing up of the fountains of the great deep,” which is generally 
supposed to refer to the upheaval or subsidence of some large 
body or bodies of land, perhaps to portions of this western 
continent, and is considered to have been the principal cause 
of the deluge ? Why omit the supposed principal cause of the 
deluge, unless it was his purpose to make out a case without 
regard to the facts? 

Furthermore, what authority has he for saying that the ark 
rested on the top of a mountain seventeen thousand feet high, 
and that the water upon the earth was five and a half miles deep?” 
Has he committed the ignorant blunder of confounding Agri- 
Dagh with the hilly district to which the name was formerly 
applied ? The lofty peak that now bears the name of Ararat 
has no such designation in Biblical history, and it is the name 
given to it in comparatively modern times. The Bible record 
is: “Fifteen cubits upwards did the waters prevail.” The 
Hebrew cubit is about twenty-two inches. If we may trust 
the conclusions of science, deluges have been no unusual 
events in the history of this globe. Most of the land, if not 
all of it, no matter how high at present, has been at some time 
submerged. Whatever one may think about the accuracy of 
the narrative in reference to the building of the ark and the 
uses to which it was put, there is certainly no physical ithpro- 
bability in the statement that that part of the earth which 
was then above water was thoroughly inundated. — Dr* Ryder : 
Mistakes of Ingersoll . 

Commanding the Sun to Stand Still.— Let the reader turn to 
Judges v, and read the “ Song of Deborah and Barak.” In 
it, it is declared “ the stars, the hosts from heaven, in their 
courses, fought against Sisera.” All understood this to be 
poetry, and no one objects to it. But suppose a writer in the 
days of the Kings were writing the history of his people, and 
were describing the battle of Barak with Sisera, and were to 
say, This is the time when, as it is written in the “ Song of 
Deborah and Barak,” “the stars in their courses fought 
against Sisera, and the hosts of heaven.” All would under- 
stand it to be a quotation of poetry, and not a historic state- 
ment. There was a Hebrew poetic book— Jasher. In this 


INFIDELITY. 


479 


book, with the license of poetry, the author declared that 
“Joshua commanded the sun and moon to stand still, and the 
Lord hearkened, and the sun and moon stood still for a day.” 
The writer of Joshua quotes this poetic declaration of one of 
the favorite poems of his people, and quotes it in the literal 
manner of the composition of that day, in precisely the man- 
ner we have supposed above. Just as we would understand 
one to be poetic license, so we do the other. There is no 
more contradiction of science in the quotation from the book 
Jasher in Joshua, than there is the Song of Deborah and 
Barak, recorded in Judges ; only in one the whole song is quoted, 
in the other only a paragraph. It is quoted in the literal 
manner of the writing of that day, as though a part of the 
text ; hence the misinterpretation and confusion over it, and 
the desperate attempts to do what never can be done, make it 
accord with science, or explain away its contradiction of science, 
if we take it as a narration of a historic fact by the historian, and 
not a quotation of a poetic hyperbole, from a national poem, and 
quoted in the literal manner sanctioned by the usages of 
writing in that day, and caused to some extent by lack of 
punctuation. — Clark Braden : Problem of Problems, 

Fertility of Palestine. — There can be no doubt of the ancient 
fertility of Palestine. This is attested both by ancient and 
modern writers. 

1. Tacitus says regarding it (Hist. Y, 6) : “ Showers are rare, 
the soil is rich. Besides our customary fruit, the balsam and 
palm are found.” Ammianus Marcellinus testifies (Book XIY, 
Oh. viii, § 11) : “ The last province of the Syrias is Palestine, 
a district of great extent, abounding in well-cultivated and 
beautiful land.” Josephus adds his testimony (Wars of the 
Jews, Book III, Oh. iii, § 2, Of. ii, xxi, 2; iii, x, 8) : “ Hor hath 
the country [of the Galileans] been ever destitute of men of 
courage, or wanted a numerous set of them ; for their soil is 
universally rich and fruitful, and full of the plantations of trees 
of all sorts, insomuch that it invites the most slothful to take 
pains in its cultivation, by its fruitfulness ; accordingly it is all 
cultivated by its inhabitants, and no part of it lies idle. More- 
over, the cities lie here very thick ; and the very many villages 
there are here, are everywhere so full of people, by the rich- 
ness of their soil, that the very least of them contain above 
fifteen thousand inhabitants. 


480 


INFIDELITY. 


*The devastation which began ages ago has, in fact, continued 
without cessation, and if it goes on at the present rate of 
increase, will ere long reduce the whole district to a state of 
utter aridity and barrenness. When Niebuhr visited the country 
at the beginning of the last century, large supplies of vegeta- 
ble produce were exported regularly to Egypt, showing that 
the original fertility was not even then exhausted. Those 
supplies have ceased, and the only wonder is that so much 
remains to satisfy a careful inquirer of the possibility of the 
events recorded in Exodus. 

Seetzen, Stanley, and Ebers incline to think that the wilder- 
ness was so very much more productive then than at present 
as to afford substantial supplies to the Israelites during their 
wanderings. However this may be, we have no right to assume 
that there was not sufficient pasturage for their flocks and 
herds, and we know not which to wonder at most, the igno- 
rance of a man who says there was not a blade of grass, or the 
credulity of those who applaud him. 

Seetzen, whom Ebers quotes with approval (Durch Gosen, p. 
234), says, Vol. Ill, p. 79: “What hindered them [the Israel- 
ites] from enjoying one of the most healthful and appetizing 
means of diet, the milk and its products, which their accom- 
panying herds afforded them, and on which many tribes of the 
Bedouins still almost exclusively subsist I What hindered them 
from slaughtering their flocks and herds, and from enjoying the 
wild edible plants, such as the Bedouins now use [Cf. Palmer, p. 
260] the fruit of date trees, and the fish which the sea along the 
entire coast produced in abundance ? — Curtis : Ingersoll and 
Moses . 

Increase of Israel. — Bosenmuller says :f u The Israelites 
lived in the most productive portion of the most productive 
of all lands, which, through the fruitfulness of the women, 
was also so pre-eminent above all other lands, that, 
according to the testimony of the greatest of all naturalists 
among the ancients, Aristotle, the women in Egypt not 
only often bore twins, but also brought to light, far 
more frequently than elsewhere, three, four, and some- 
times five children at a birth. He tells us of a woman 


*Speaker’s Commentary , New York, 1871, Vol. 1, p. 246. 
f Das alte und neue Morgenland , Leipzig, 1818, Vol. 1, p. 252. 


INFIDELITY. 


481 


(Hist. Animal , vii, 4) who was in the last-named condition four 
times.f Maillet, who lived sixteen years as French consul in 
Egypt, saysif “ The air in this country is much purer and 
better than in any other. This salubrity of the air imparts 
itself to all organic beings — plants and animals. The females,, 
not only of the human species, but also of animals, are more 
fruitful than any other in the world.” 

Eeginald Stuart Poole, of the British Museum, remarks § 
(article Egypt) : “ It is deemed disreputable for a young man 

not to marry when he has attained a sufficient age ; there are,, 
therefore, few unmarried men. Girls, in like manner, marry 
very young ; some even at ten years of age, and few remain 
single beyond the age of sixteen; they are generally very 
prolific .” The italics are my own. — Curtis: Ingersoll and 
Moses. 

Polygamy. — The case has been well put by Michaelis, Mosaisches 
Recht , Frankfurt, 1775, Part ii, p. 179: “It appears to me that 
Moses did not willingly permit polygamy as a matter, indifferent 
morally and politically, but, to use an expression of Christ, on 
account of the Israelites’ hardness of heart ; that is, with other 
words, he was not favorable to it, but he found it advisable to 
endure it as a civil measure. 

“His first book, consisting of history, contains much which 
does not commend polygamy. According to him, God gives,, 
at a time when the rapid peopling of the earth was the main 
object of the Creator, to the first man only one wife, although 
it is clear that with four wives he could have begotten more 
children than with one. * * * If polygamy had 

been pleasing to God, He would have commanded that every 
son of Noah should have married as many wives as possible. 
######*** 

“ He did not allow that eunuchs should be made among the 
Israelites. * * * ’Moreover, a eunuch who came 

from another country to the Israelites, was excluded by a 
special law for life from the people of God, i. e ., was incapable 
of the civil and ecclesiastical rights of an Israelite, Deut. xxiii : 
1. This was a very unfavorable ordinance for polygamy. Com- 

fCompare Columella, Be re rust , iii, 8 ; Plin. Hist. Nat. vii, 3. 

%Description de VEgypte , Paris, 1733, i, p. 18. 

\ Encyclopaedia Britannica } New York, 1878, Vol. vii, p. 725. 

El 


482 


INFIDELITY. 


monly, polygamy and castration go together, and in the lands 
where the former prevails, there are thousands, yea millions of 
eunuchs. * * * * In short, without eunuchs no great 

seraglio can be kept.” — Curtis : Ingersoll and Moses . 

Ingersoll’s Unreasonableness. — Col. Ingersoll and men of his 
style of criticism (and, I am sorry to say, some preachers, also), 
quote a verse from Genesis precisely as though the same 
words, or the same event, were found in the Gospels. They 
judge an act or a usage recorded in the Pentateuch precisely 
as though it were found in the Acts of the Apostles. They 
make no allowance for the stage of human progress. They 
would teach a child surveying before he had learned the multi- 
plication table. They talk about “ skulls ” as indicating 
progress, but God must needs put the same ideas into a 
skull of the Laurentian period that He does into a skull of 
to-day. Otherwise, God is worthy of hate. They would preach 
the doctrine of equality on the deck of a man-of-war. They 
utterly ignore the drill that men and nations need in coming 
up to their majority. They would suffer the rabble in a court- 
room to vote down the decision of a judge on the bench. The 
men who are historically connected with God’s order of things 
must dispense with the great schoolmaster — experience. Ideas 
must spring forth complete, like Minerva. Rafters and dome 
must touch the skies the same day the foundation stones were 
laid. Those are the ideas with which a certain class of critics 
approach the Old Testament. If a people are not ripe for a 
commonwealth, and God gives them a king, God is all wrong. 
If a people are become a great military camp and Moses pro- 
claims martial law, Moses and his God are monsters of cruelty. 
If there are no jails, no way of disposing of prisoners of war, 
and a gentle servitude is the substitute, God is a great slave- 
driver. If men’s lusts are so greedy that even the best of 
them want more wives than one, the patience of God with the 
slow growth of moral ideas is translated as the establishment 
of polygamy. If a people are so vile and filthy that the beasts 
are clean and modest in comparison, and God sends an army 
to wipe them out of being, we are pointed to the white faces 
of women and children lifted on the crests of the divine wrath. 
— Arthur Swazey. 

His “Mistakes” are Unscrupulous Ones.— The prevailing feel- 
ing among intelligent readers of the Bible in reference to 


INFIDELITY. 


483 


the profane and coarse assaults made on it by Mr. Kobert 
Ingersoll, is that few people are so ignorant as to be 
imposed upon by his vulgar witticisms. But, inasmuch as 
there are not a few who accept without inquiry his account of 
what is in the Bible, it may be well to give a few illustrations 
of his unscrupulousness, in putting “ mistakes ” into the Bible 
which he either knows, or ought to know, are not there. 

He asserts positively that Moses must have understood by 
firmament something solid, though every one who has studied the 
subject knows, and the fact has been published again and again, 
that the Hebrew word means something exceedingly attenuated, 
being the very best word in the language to designate the atmos- 
phere ; while the mistake found in the English word “ firma- 
ment,” is due to the science of Alexandria, where in the third 
eentury before Christ, the “ expanse ” of Moses was translated 
“ stereoma ” (firmament) to suit the advanced astronomy of the 
time. 

When, in speaking of the vegetation of the third day, he 
says, “ Not a blade of grass had even been touched by a single 
gleam of light,” is he dealing fairly with a narrative that makes 
light its first creation ? 

When he accuses Moses of compressing the astronomy of 
the universe into five words, is he dealing fairly with a narra- 
tive that does not profess to give any astronomy at all, but, 
after a general reference to the heavens and the earth as created 
in the beginning, restricts itself to the earth and its “ environ- 
ment? ” Any intelligent person can see that this is the reason 
why sun, moon and stars are referred to only in their relations 
to the earth. 

When he represents the first and second chapters of Genesis 
as a varying repetition of the same story, is it fair to withhold 
all reference to the different purport and object of the two 
narratives, which fully and satisfactorily explains the varia- 
tion ? 

Is it fair to speak of the deluge to represent it as ascribed to 
nothing but rain, when the Bible expressly says, “All the foun- 
tains of the great deep were broken up,” evidently pointing to 
such a subsidence of the land as is familiar to any one ac- 
quainted with geology. 

Is it fair to make the Bible responsible for the Armenian 
tradition that the ark rested on the top of Mount Ararat, 17,000 


484 


INFIDELITY. 


feet high, when the Bible nowhere, from Genesis to Revelation r 
makes any such statement? The district of Ararat on the 
mountains or highlands of which the ark rested is not the 
“Agri-Dagh ” to which the name Ararat has in modern times 
been given; and Mr. IngersolPs ignorant mistake about it is of 
the same kind as that of the bumpkin who should inquire for 
the Coliseum in Rome, R. Y., or seek the tomb of Leonidas in 
Sparta, Wisconsin. 

It will be at once seen that with this childlike ignorance i& 
connected the Ingersoll nonsense that the water was five and 
a half miles deep. So says the ignorant critic, while the simple 
and reasonable statement of the Bible is : u Fifteen cubits up- 
wards did the water prevail.” As for the submersion of even 
the hills to the utmost verge of the horizon, the subsidence of 
the land was quite sufficient to accomplish it without resorting 
to the supposition of any unreasonable quantity of water. 

Is it fair, when Mr. Ingersoll wishes to render ridiculous the 
rate of increase among the Israelites in Egypt, to represent the 
length of their stay there as 215 years, when Moses says (Ex- 
odus xii: 40): “Row the sojourning of the children of Israel 
who dwelt in Egypt was 430 years.” The only other place in 
the Pentateuch where the length of their stay is referred to is 
in the prediction concerning it in Genesis xv., where it is put in 
round numbers at 400 years. To do Mr. Ingersoll justice, it is 
admitted that certain theologians, on the strength of one or two 
passages in the Rew Testament and some genealogical difficul- 
ties, have favored shortening the period, but the subject was 
not the mistakes of Moses, but of theologians ; and again we 
ask, Was it fair, without a word of apology or explanation, to 
deduct more than two centuries from the time Moses gives, and 
then make all his coarse, not to say indecent, ridicule turn on 
the shortness of the time ? 

One hardly knows how to characterize the infamy of such a 
passage as that about the bird-eating priests during the time of 
rapid increase, in view of the fact that there were no priests at 
all, and no such rule as he refers to during the entire 430 years t 
The consecration of Aaron, the first priest, did not take place 
till after the Law was given at Sinai, and the ordinance relating 
to the offering of the pigeons was still later. These are mere 
specimens of the mistakes and misrepresentations which form 
the warp and woof of this lecture. — Dr. Gibson: Mistakes of 
Moses . 


INFIDELITY. 


485 


A Daily Editor’s Decision. — We sometimes feel like apologiz- 
ing for publishing the lectures of Ingersoll, although such pub- 
lication calls for no apology. IngersolPs mind is so bright, his 
method of thought is so original, his style is so clear, and his 
language flows with such force and volume and brilliancy, that 
his lectures make very good reading. Moreover, he has de- 
servedly obtained a prominence which gives importance to his 
utterances, and we think it is always well before refuting the 
arguments of an infidel to read them. 

But while we have uniformly published Ingersoll’s lectures 
as items of news, we should dislike exceedingly to be consid- 
ered as agreeing with him in opinion. We are so far from sub- 
scribing to IngersolPs opinion of himself, that if we had to 
choose between the infallibility of Ingersoll and the infallibility 
of the Pope, we should prefer the Pope. For Mr. Ingersoll is 
not merely bumptious and vulgar and superfluously offensive, 
but, in addition to being animated by that very narrowness and 
bigotry which he denounces in others, he is a destroyer who 
does not rebuild ; he proposes to tear down the edifice of Chris- 
tianity before he has provided anything better, or even worse, 
as a substitute, and brilliant and original as he is, the world 
would not be much better off after it had exchanged its imper- 
fect Christianity for the more perfect system of Ingersollism. 

It is, perhaps, merely a question of taste as to' IngersolPs 
flippancy and vulgarity, although an infidel might be no less 
conscientious if he had some respect for the beliefs which have 
ennobled the lives and sweetened the deaths of thousands of 
millions of Christians through sixty generations* But a more 
serious fault than the lack of decency in manner is the lack of 
judgment and capacity which marks his treatment of his grave 
subject. It is not the fault of Christianity, but the fault of a 
curious distemper in Mr. IngersolPs mind, that in Christianity, 
in the religion inspired by God, he sees only the errors and im- 
perfections of man. Of his own absolute infallibility and per- 
sonal perfection, Mr. Ingersoll does not seem to entertain any 
doubt; it has not entered into his mind to study himself and to 
inquire whether he was wholly free from the faults and errors 
of which he proposes to convict his neighbors. Such vanity is 
not uncommon, and though in his case it is pushed to a a ludi- 
crous extent, it is quite harmless. But something which is not 
harmless, which is worse than his vanity, his flippancy, his vul- 


486 


INFIDELITY. 


garity, and even liis scurrility in mocking at all that the world’s 
best minds hold sacred, is his utter unfitness, his mental limita- 
tion and incapacity in treating the question he has chosen. 

Because Christians, in direct and willful disobedience of 
the teachings of Christianity, have persecuted each other 
because sectarians, through strained constructions of the Bible, 
have supported narrow and harsh opinions, Mr. Ingersoll 
would abolish Christianity and repudiate the Bible. This is- 
neither logic nor sense. In the grand history of that religious 
belief which has done so much to curb the fierce passions of 
our nature, to subjugate the barbarism of the European races, 
to raise the world from the darkness of savagery, from the 
sway of cruelty and rapine and lust to the pure light of civil- 
ization, to the rule of gentleness and justice and charity, Mr. 
Ingersoll can see nothing but a St. Bartholomew massacre here 
and a Puritan blue law there. Picking these out,‘ he holds 
them up to execration, and triumphantly demands, “Is this 
your boasted Christianity V 7 Really, this is too stupid. Give 
Mr. Ingersoll a barge load of wheat, he would diligently 
search in it for a handful of chaff, and, having found it, would 
scuttle the barge and sink the wheat as a worthless mockery. 
Give him the Little Pittsburg Mine, he would assay the quartz 
and granite, and forthwith order the mine to be shut up. Yet,, 
wheat is good wheat though there be a handful of chaff in a 
bushel of it, and the Little Pittsburg Mine pays its owners 
thousands of dollars each day in pure gold and silver, and the 
stupidity which would see only the chaff in a cargo of wheat, 
and only the waste and refuse in a rich gold mine, is not more 
dense than the stupidity which sees only the dross of human 
error and weakness amid the pure gold, the boundless wealth 
of the Christian religion. 

To hold such argument needs only a little wit and a great 
deal of malice. It does not demand either learning, or decency r 
or honesty ; on the contrary, it does better without them. A 
little honesty would teach Mr. Ingersoll that in weighing a, 
religious system in the balance its merits must be taken 
account of as well as its faults, and a little learning would 
have taught him that by far the greater part of all that the 
world has to-day which is worth having is due directly and 
solely to Christianity ; while a little decency would have taught 
him that his rejection of a creed which he neither appreciates 


INFIDELITY. 


487 


nor understands, would seem no less honest if it were free from 
the scurvy jests of the clown and the specious claptrap of the 
demagogue. — Editor of Globe-Bemocrat : St. Louis, February 
8th , 1880. 

Franklin’s Plea for Public Prayers.— In the beginning of the 
contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had 
daily prayers in this room for the Divine protection. Our 
prayers, sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. 
All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed 
frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favor. 
To that kind Providence we owe this happy opportunity of con- 
sulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national 
felicity. And have we now forgotten this powerful Friend ? or 
do we imagine we no longer need His assistance ? I have lived 
for a long time (81 years) ; and the longer I live the more con- 
vincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the 
affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground 
without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise with- 
out His aid. We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings, 
that “ Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that 
build it.” I firmly believe this ; and I also believe that with- 
out His concurring aid we shall proceed in this political building 
no better than the builders of Babel ; we shall be divided by our 
little, partial, local interests ; our prospects will be confounded; 
and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a by-word down 
to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter, 
from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing govern- 
ment by human wisdom, and leave it to chance, war or conquest. 
I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers, implor- 
ing the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our delibera- 
tions, be held in this assembly every morning before we pro- 
ceed to business ; and that one or more of the clergy of this city 
be requested to officiate in that service. — Benjamin Franklin : 
Speech in Convention for forming a Constitution for the United 
States, 1787. 

Gibbon on marriage. — Experience has proved that savages are 
the tyrants of the female sex, and that the condition of women 
is usually softened by the refinements of social life. * * * * 

But this union on the side of the woman was rigorous and un- 
equal ; and she renounced the name and worship of her father’s 
house, to embrace a new servitude decorated only by the title 


488 


INFIDELITY. 


of adoption. * * * * By his (the husband) judgment 

or caprice her behavior was approved, or censured or chas- 
tised ; he exercised the jurisdiction of life and death ; and it was 
allowed, that in the cases of adultery or drunkenness the sen- 
tence might be properly inflicted. She acquired and inherited 
for the sole profit of her lord; and so clearly was woman de- 
fined, not as a person, but as a thing, that if the original title 
were deficient, she might be claimed, like other movables, by 
the use and possession of an entire year. The inclination of 
the Roman husband discharged or withheld the conjugal debt, 
so scrupulously exacted by the Athenian and Jewish laws; but 
as polygamy was unknown he could never admit to his bed a 
fairer or more favored partner. ****** 

The dignity of marriage was restored by the Christians, who 
derived all spiritual grace from the prayers of the faithful and 
the benediction of the priest or bishop. The origin, validity, 
and duties of the holy institution were regulated by the tradi- 
tion of the synagogue, the precepts of the gospel, and the 
canons of general or provincial synods ; and the conscience of 
the Christians was awed by the degrees and censures of their 
ecclesiastical rulers. Yet the magistrates of Justinian (A. D. 
534-565) were not subject to the authority of the Church; the 
emperor consulted the unbelieving civilians of antiquity, and 
the choice of matrimonial laws in the Code and Pandects, was 
directed by the earthly motives of justice, policy, and the 
natural freedom of both sexes. — Gibbon's Decline and Fall: 
Chap, xliii. 

On Divorce. — The warmest applause has been lavished on the 
virtue of the Romans, who abstained from the exercise of this 
tempting privilege (divorce) above five hundred years ; but the 
same fact evinces the unequal terms of a connexion in which 
the slave was unable to renounce her tyrant, and the tyrant 
was unwilling to relinquish his slave. — Gibbon : Ibid , Chap. 
xliii. 

Lecky on Marriage, Concubinage, Etc.— Against these notions 
(promiscuous marriage and concubinage) Christianity declared 
a direct and implacable warfare, which was imperfectly reflected 
in the civil legislation, but appeared unequivocally in the writ- 
ings of the Fathers and in most of the decrees of the Councils. 
— Lechy : European Morals , Vol. 2, p. 350. 

Toe extreme sanctitv attrbon+ad to virginity, the absolute 


INFIDELITY. 


489 


condemnation of all forms of sexual connection other than 
marriage, and the formation and gradual realization of the 
Christian conception of marriage as a permanent union of a 
man and woman of the same religious opinions, consecrated by 
solemn religious services, carrying with it a deep religious sig- 
nification, and dissoluble only by death, were the most obvious 
signs of Christian influence in the sphere of ethics we are 
examining. Another very important result of the new religion 
was to raise to a far greater honor than they had previously 
possessed, the qualities in which women peculiarly excel. — 
Lecky : European Morals , Vol. 2, p. 358. 

A Close Resemblance. — Our hero is a cultivated personage, 
and acquainted with the modern sciences; sneers at witchcraft 
and the black art, even while employing them as heartily as any 
member of the French Institute ; for he is a pliilosoplie, and 
doubts most things, nay, half disbelieves even his own existence. 

It is not without cunning effort that all this is managed ; but 
managed in a considerable degree, it is ; for a world is opened 
to us which, we might almost say, we feel to be at once true 
and not true. * * * Doubtless, our hero has the 

manners of a gentleman ; he knows the world ; nothing can 
exceed the easy tact with which he manages himself; his wit 
and sarcasm are unlimited ; the cool, heartfelt contempt with 
which he despises all things, human and divine, might make the 
fortune of half-a-dozen fellows about town. He is sometimes 
called the Denier , and this truly is his name ; for as Yoltaire 
did with historical doubt, so does he with all moral appearances 
— settles them with a Wen croyez rien. 

The shrewd, all-informed intellect he has, is an attorney intel- 
lect ; it can contradict but it cannot affirm. With lynx vision 
he descries at a glance the ridiculous, the unsuitable, the bad ; 
but for the solemn, the noble, the worthy, he is blind. 

Thus does he go along, qualifying, confuting, despising ; on all 
hands detecting the false, but without force to bring forth, or 
even to discern any glimpse of the true. 

Poor fellow ! What truth should there be for him ? To see 
falsehood is his only truth; falsehood and evil are the rule; 
truth and good the exception which confirms it. He can believe 
in nothing but his own self-conceit, and in the indestructible 
baseness, folly, and hypocrisy of men. * * * At 

humanity he has no grudge ; hr merely operates by way of 
experiment to pass the time scientifically. 


490 


INFIDELITY. 


Such a combination of logical Life and moral Death, so uni- 
versal a Denier, both in heart and head, is undoubtedly a 
child of Darkness, an emissary of the Primeval Nothing; 
and coming forward, as he does, like a person of breeding, 
and without any flavor of brimstone, may stand here, 
in his merely spiritual deformity, at once, potent, dangerous and 
contemptible . — Thomas Carlyle ; Foreign Review, 1828. 

Creed or Cant — Which 1 — In examining the assurances of our 
advanced speculators, that in any case morality is safe, we are 
struck by a peculiar inconsequence with regard to the moral 
nature in general. They are, in short, sensational moralists, 
who are forced, by the straits of their position, into holding 
the highest type of intuitional ethics. The resulting idol is a 
very odd compound of gold and clay. When one suggests 
that atheism or materialism is fatal to rational ethics, we are 
always treated to a homily conceived in the spirit of the highest 
intuitional morality. God or no God, we are told, there is an 
eternal distinction between right and wrong. Whether there 
be a future life or no, it is still an imperative duty to live 
nobly here. In particular, the eternal sanctity of truth, and its 
supreme value for the seeking soul, are largely dwelt upon. 
The advanced thinker must have no other motto than the heroic 
words, “ I covet truth ; ” and he must resign all the comforts, 
all the joys, all the hopes of his heart, if they seem to conflict 
with the eternal veracities. No illusions, no dreams for 
him. No belief because it is useful or because it is pleasant. 
However bleak and barren it may be, he will know the 
truth. It may leave him an orphan, and hopeless in the 
universe, still he will know the truth. Christians are 
often twitted with believing immorally — that is, with pre- 
ferring the rest and happiness of unfounded beliefs, to the 
heroic and noble disquiet of absolute loyalty of truth. Even 
the belief in immortality is rejected, not merely as unproved, 
but as tending, by its selfish hopes, to dim the luster of abso- 
lute loyalty to right and duty. The homily is apt to close with 
a whispered prayer, just loud enough to be overheard, that “he 
may join the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live 
again in souls made better by their presence.” By this time 
the objector is heartily ashamed of himself, and, as he gazes on 
this noble being, in whom self is crucified and duty is all and 
in all, he wonders how he could ever have made his unfortu- 


INFIDELITY. 


491 


nate suggestion, that any conceivable change of opinion could 
remove from duty the seal of inviolable obligation. This 
moral enthusiasm glows with all the fervor of a Hebrew 
prophet ; but, unfortunately, our satisfaction and appreciation 
are partly obscured by the fact that when the origin and nature 
of conscience are in debate, the same eloquent worthies are quite 
sure to tell us that conscience has a very earthly origin. Then 
we learn that there is no absolute right, and that moral opinions 
depend entirely on custom and circumstance. The moral 
nature has its roots in physical desire. Love of pleasure, fear 
of pain, a bit of sympathy, and a large amount of selfish expec- 
tation, will produce a conscience when thrown together in the 
same being, and worked over by the chemistry of association. 
Our distinctions of right and wrong rest upon no eternal 
nature of things, but express merely the way in which we have 
been brought up. Had the “ environment v been different, both 
truth and righteousness would have been different. Let the 
theist but construct an argument for the existence of God on 
the nature of conscience, and he will quickly learn that con- 
science has little reason to be proud of its pedigree. Now, 
one cannot help feeling a little surprise when he learns that 
the expounder of this doctrine is the same superior being who 
before made such a glowing and thrilling defence of absolute 
truth and right. — Borden P. Bowne : Studies in Theism, pp. 
415-16. 

Never a State of Atheists. — There has never been a state of 
Atheists. If you wander over the earth, you may find cities 
without walls, without king, without mint, without theatre or 
gymnasium ; but you will never find a city without God, with- 
out prayer, without oracle, without sacrifice. Sooner may a 
city stand without foundations, than a state without belief in 
the Gods. This is the bond of all society and the pillar of all 
legislation. — Plutarch : Adv. Colotem, e. 31. 

Who Has the Advantage ? — Indisputably, the firm believers in 
the gospel have a great advantage over all others — for this 
simple reason, that if true, they will have their reward here- 
after ; and if there be no hereafter, they can be but with the 
infidel in his eternal sleep, having had the assistance of an 
exalted hope, through life, without subsequent disappointment, 
since “out of nothing, nothing can arise,” not even sorrow. — 
Lord Byron : Letter to J. Shepherd, Pisa, December 8, 1821. 


492 


INFIDELITY. 


Cannot Approve Infidelity.— You should by no means seem to 
approve, encourage or applaud those libertine notions which 
strike at religions equally, and which are the poor threadbare 
topics of half wits, and minute philosophers. Even those who 
are silly enough to laugh at their jokes are still wise enough to 
distrust and detect their characters ; for, putting moral virtues 
at the highest, and religion at the lowest, religion must still be 
allowed to be a collateral security at least to virtue ; and every 
prudent man will sooner trust to two securities than one. — 
Lord Chesterfield : Letters to his Son, January S, 1750. 

Burke’s Fulmination. — These men who would take away what- 
ever ennobles the rank or consoles the misfortunes of human 
nature, by breaking off that connection of observances of affec- 
tions, of hopes and fears, which bind us to the Divinity, and 
constitute the glorious and distinguishing prerogative of hu- 
manity, that of being a religious creature; against these I 
would have the laws rise in all their majesty of terrors, to 
fulminate such vain and impious wretches, and to awe them 
into impotence by the only dread they can fear or believe. — 
Burke: Speech on Belief of Protestant Dissenters, March 17, 
1773. 

Bacon on Atheism. — I had rather believe all the fables in the 
legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this uni- 
versal frame is without a mind; and therefore God never 
wrought miracles to convince atheism, because his ordinary 
works convince it. It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth 
man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s 
minds about to religion; for while the mind of man looketh 
upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, 
and go no farther ; but when it beholdeth the chain of them 
confederate, and linked together, it must needs fly to provi- 
dence and Deity. They that deny a God destroy a man’s no- 
bility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; 
and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base, ignoble 
creature. It destroys, likewise, magnanimity, and the raising 
human nature . — Lord Bacon : Essay xvii. 

The World Compared to a Palace. — As when a man comes into 
a palace, built according to the exactest rule of art, and with 
an unexceptionable conveniency for the inhabitants, he would 
acknowledge both the being and skill of the builder ; so who- 
soever shall observe the disposition of all the parts of the 


INFIDELITY. 


493 


world, their connection, comeliness, the variety of seasons, 
the swarms of different creatures, and the mutual offices they 
render to one another, cannot conclude less, than it was con- 
trived by an infinite skill, effected by infinite power, and gov- 
erned by infinite wisdom. None can imagine a ship to be orderly 
conducted without a pilot; nor the parts of the world to per- 
form their several functions without a wise guide ; considering 
the members of the body cannot perform theirs, without the 
active presence of the soul. The atheist, then, is a fool to deny 
that which every creature in his constitution asserts, and there- 
by renders himself unable to give a satisfactory account of that 
constant uniformity in the motions of the creatures . — Charnock 
on Atheism, 

Measured by His Own Tape. — An atheist, if you take his word 
for it, is a very despicable mortal. Let us describe him by his 
tenet, and copy him a little from his own original. He is, then, 
no better than a heap of organized dust, a stalking machine, a 
speaking head without a soul in it. His thoughts are bound by 
the laws of motion, his actions are all prescribed. He has no 
more liberty than the current of a stream or the blast of a 
tempest; and where there is no choice there can be no merit. — 
Jeremy Collier, 

It Is Inhuman. — Settle it therefore in your minds, as a maxim 
never to be effaced or forgotten, that atheism is an inhuman, 
bloody, ferocious system, equally hostile to every useful 
restraint, and to every virtuous affection ; that leaving nothing 
above us to excite awe, nor round us to awaken tenderness, it 
wages war with heaven and with earth ; its first object is to 
dethrone God, its next to destroy man . — Robert Hall : Modern 
Infidelity, 

No Compensation for Sorrow. — Atheism sits down on the shore 
of Time ; the stream of human history rolls by, bearing succes- 
sively, as bubbles on its bosom, the Egyptian civilization, and it 
passes slowly by, with its myriads of millions, and the bubble 
breaks; the Hebrew, Chaldean, Persian, Grecian, Roman, 
Christian civilization, and they pass by as other bubbles, with 
their myriads of millions, multiplied by myriads of millions. 
Their sorrows are all ended ; they were sorrows for nothing. 
The tears which furrowed the cheek, the unrequited heroism, 
the virtue unrewarded — they have perished, and there is no 
compensation; because it is a body without a soul, an earth 


494 


INFIDELITY. 


without a heaven, a world without a God. “ Does not that con- 
tent you?” asks our atheist. — Theodore Parker: Theism , p. 35. 

An unbiased consideration of its general aspects forces us 
to conclude that Religion, everywhere present as a weft running 
through the warp of human history, expresses some eternal 
fact. — Herbert Spencer: Principles of Philosophy, p. 20. 

The Great Thinkers 7 Logic.— “Were men, 77 says Hume, “led into 
the apprehension of invisible intelligent power by contempla- 
tion of the works of Nature, they could never possibly enter- 
tain any conception but of one single Being, who bestowed 
existence and order on this vast machine and adjusted all its 
parts to one regular system. 77 Lange says : “ But when the 
great thought of one God, acting as a unit upon the universe, 
has been seized, the connection of things in accordance with 
the law of cause and effect is not only thinkable, but it is a 
necessary consequence of the assumption. 77 Newton and Boyle 
lived and worked happily under the influence of this concep- 
tion. We have here a conception of the relation of Nature to 
its Author which seems perfectly acceptable to some minds, 
but perfectly intolerable to others. — John Tyndall: Belfast 
Address . 

Tyndall Repudiates Atheism. — Were the religious moods of 
many of my assailants the only alternative ones, I do not 
know how strong the claims of the doctrine of “Material 
Atheism 77 upon my allegiance might be. Probably they would 
be very strong. But, as it is, I have noticed during years of 
self-observation that it is not in hours of clearness and vigor 
that this doctrine commends itself to my mind; that in the 
presence of stronger and healthier thought it ever dissolves 
and disappears, as offering no solution of the mystery in 
which we dwell, and of which we form a part. — John Tyndall : 
Preface to Belfast Address. 

Carlyle’s Pronunciation. — There is but one thing without honor : 
smitten with eternal barrenness, inability to do or to be — 
insincerity, unbelief. He who believes no thing, who believes 
only the show of things, is not in relation with nature and fact 
at all. — Carlyle . 

Richter’s. — I would rather dwell in the dim fog of supersti- 
tion than in air rarified to nothing by the air-pump of unbelief: 
in which the panting breast expires, vainly and convulsively 
gasping for breath. — Bichter. 


INFIDELITY. 


495 


Tyndall’s Questions. — Whence come we ; whither go we ? The 
question dies without an answer — without even an echo — upon 
the infinite shores of the Unknown. Let us follow matter to 
its utmost bounds ; let us claim it in all its forms to experiment 
with and to speculate upon. Casting the term “vital force” 
from our vocabulary, let us reduce, if we can, the visible phe- 
nomena of life to mechanical attractions and repulsions. Having 
thus exhausted physics, and reached its very rim, the real 
mystery still looms beyond us. We have, in fact, made no step 
towards its solution. And thus it will ever loom — even beyond 
the bourne of knowledge — compelling the philosophies of 
successive ages to confess that 

“We are such stuff 

As dreams are made of, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep.” 

— Prof. Tyndall: TJse and Limit of the Imagination in Science. 

[Thinking Prof. Tyndall to have a noble, dual thought in him, we 
endeavor to present both phases, although this last corresponds 
amazingly with the foliowing : — Ed.] 

Ingersoll’s Answer. — Life is a narrow vale between the cold 
and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look 
beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the 
echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreply- 
ing dead there comes no word ; but in the night of death hope 
sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. 
He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the approach of 
death for the return of health, whispered with his latest breath, 
“ I am better now ! ” * * * For whether in mid sea 

or ? mong the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck must mark 
at last the end of each ; and all and every life, no matter if its 
every hour is rich with love, and every moment jeweled with a 
joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy as sad, and deep, and 
dark, as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and 
death. — Robert G. Ingersoll : Funeral Oration. 

Huxley Says Atheism is Absurd. — I do not know that I care very 
much about popular odium, so that there is no great merit in 
saying that if I really saw fit to deny the existence of a God 
I should certainly do so, for the sake of my own intellectual 
freedom, and be the honest Atheist you are pleased to say I 
am. As it happens, however, I cannot take this position with 


496 


INFIDELITY. 


honesty, inasmuch as it is, and always has been, a favorite tenet 
of mine, that Atheism is as absurd, logically speaking, as 
Polytheism. — Prof. Huxley : Spectator, Feb. 10, 1866. 

The Inscrutable Power. — Thus the consciousness of an Inscru- 
table Power, manifested to us through all phenomena, has been 
growing ever clearer ; and must eventually be freed from its 
imperfections. The certainty that on the one hand such a 
Power exists, while, on the other hand, its nature transcends 
intuition and is beyond imagination, is the certainty towards 
which intelligence has from the first been progressing. — 
Herbert Spencer : First Principles , p. 108. 

[We quote, here and there, a few of the best current evolutionists, to 
show the reluctance with which they both confess and deny a Personal 
Being. As compared with the vast volume said, practically, against 
the Living God, these utterances are but the minutest fragments, 
wrenched, as it were, from them. Yet they are enough to show how 
hard it is to tear the conception of Jehovah, root and branch, from 
the soul. — Ed .] 

Pascal’s Scathing Rebuke to Infidel Ignorance.— This is the 
admirable picture which Pascal has drawn of that very state of 
mind which is now recommended to us as wisdom : u I know 
not who has placed me in the world, nor what the world is, nor 
what I myself am. My ignorance on all subjects is terrible. 
I do not know what my body is, or my senses, or my soul, and 
that part of myself which thinks what I utter, which reflects on 
everything, and on itself, and has no better knowledge of itself 
than of all the rest. I behold those appalling depths of the 
universe which shut me in ; and I find myself tied to a corner 
of that vast space, without knowing why I am placed in this 
spot, rather than in another, nor why the little moment which 
is given me to live, has been assigned to me at this particular 
point, rather than any other in the whole of that eternity which 
has preceded me, and the whole of that eternity which is to 
follow. I see nothing but infinities on all sides which enclose 
me like an atom, and like a shadow which abideth but an instant 
and returneth not. All that I know, is that I must shortly die ; 
but that of which I am most ignorant, is that very death from 
which I cannot escape. 

As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go ; 
and I know only that when I leave this world, I fall forever, 
either into annihilation or into the hands of an angry God, with- 


INFIDELITY. 


497 


out knowing to which of these two conditions I am forever 
condemned. Behold my state, full of misery, of weakness, of 
obscurity. And from all this I conclude that I ought to pass 
all the days of my life without a moment’s reflection on that 
which shall befall me. Perchance I might find some ray of 
light to guide me in my doubts; but I will not take the trouble, 
I will not take a single step to seek it ; and after treating with 
contempt those who do engage in the task, I will go without 
forethought and without fear to encounter so great an event, 
and suffer myself to be led softly to death in utter uncertainty 
of what shall be my condition to all eternity. 

How can a reasonable man entertain such thoughts as these f 
Nothing is so important to a man as his condition ; nothing is 
so awful for him as eternity ; and that he should be found indif- 
ferent to the loss of his being, and to the peril of an eternity 
of miseries, is certainly not natural. The merest trifles will stir 
a man to rage and despair ; and yet he can contemplate the loss 
of everything by death without an emotion. It is a prodigy to 
see in one and the same heart, at one and the same time, this 
sensibility to trifles, and this insensibility to matters of the 
weightiest import. It is an incomprehensible, preternatural 
infatuation, which must be due to some cause of irresistible 
force. — Thoughts , pp. 135-7, Havet’s Edition. 

Max Muller. — There was in the heart of man from the very 
first a feeling of incompleteness, of weakness, of dependence, 
whatever we like to call it in our abstract language. We can 
explain it as little as we can explain why the new-born child 
feels the cravings of hunger and thirst. But it was so from the 
first, and is so even now. Man knows not whence he comes 
and whither he goes. He looks for a guide, for a friend; he 
wearies for some one on whom he can rest; he wants some- 
thing like a father in heaven. In addition to all the impres- 
sions which he received from the outer world, there was in the 
heart of man a stronger impulse from within — a sigh, a yearning, 
a call for something that should not come and go like every- 
thing else, that should be before, and after, and forever, that 
should hold and support everything, that should make man feel 
at home in this strange world .— Max Muller : Chips from a 
German Workshop, Vol. 1, p. 240. 

The Mission of Infidels. — The mission of infidels is not to build 
up anything but to pull down churches, civil laws, governments, 

Fl 


498 


INFIDELITY. 


morals, the characters of men and women, peace, happiness, 
protection of home, property and life. They come with a mis- 
sion of denials of the truths contained in the Bible, a mission 
of war upon the Bible, religion, and the friends of purity and 
mercy. They come not with a mission of peace and good-will 
to man, but a mission of hatred towards the Bible and all it 
enjoins — a mission to pull down and destroy — to spread deso- 
lation among other men’s labors and lay their work in ruins, 
leaving nothing but wrecks and devastation. 

They come to neutralize, paralyze and dishearten all efforts 
for the amelioration of man’s condition — to discourage, enfeeble 
and ignore all efforts to rise. They come not into our midst 
with a warm, kind and affectionate appeal to the attentive, 
thinking and reflective portion — the more spiritually-minded ; 
but appeal to the luke-warm, back-sliding, or the apostate, who 
is beginning to stand at a distance, who already is descending 
upon the retrograde plane — not to rescue him, or to prevent 
his retrograde movement, but to accelerate it. 

The mission of infidels is not to enlighten, civilize and ennoble 
the nations. They have never enlightened, civilized or elevated 
a nation or a people since the world was made. They have 
never organized society, or established peace and order in 
anyplace on this earth. They have established no civil institu- 
tions, no system of morals, no code of laws, no system of educa- 
tion and no institutions of learning that deserve the name. — 
FJlder Benjamin Franldin: “Gems,” p. 135. 

The Village Critics. — We have heard village critics of the loom 
and forge discuss such questions as are handled by Colenso, 
and the Essays and Reviews, and often with much more acute- 
ness and penetration. With what eclat has our village critic 
unhorsed the itinerant preacher with the inquiry, What became 
of the forks belonging to the nine-and-twenty knives which 
Ezra brought back from Babylon? but was, alas! himself 
routed in the moment of triumph by the inquiry as to the sex 
of the odd, clean beasts of Noah’s sevens. How often has our 
village blacksmith critic requested a sermon upon the genealogy 
of Melchizedec, which the minister agreed to furnish when our 
blacksmith could tell him the foundry which manufactured 
Tubal Cain’s hammer and anvil. Lot’s wife, the witch of 
Endor, Jonah’s whale, the sundial of Ahaz, and the population 
of Nineveh, were all duly discussed, together with the bodies 


INFIDELITY. 


499 


in which the angels dined with Abraham. * * * * 

But the question — which we marvel beyond measure that the 
bishop overlooks — always was : Where did Cain get his wife? 
This is the fundamental question for such critics. If the bishop 
will only answer that question, and introduce us politely to 
Cain’s wife, I will engage that she will answer most of these 
difficult questions. The bishop does actually devote Chap, v 
to the impossibility of Moses addressing all Israel; Chap, vi, 
to the extent of the camp compared with the priests’ duties ; 
Chap, xx, to the grave difficulty of the three priestly families 
consuming the offerings of some millions of people; which 
surely, to a bishop of the Church of England, should not be an 
unparalleled feat. Such chapters enable us to appreciate the 
mental calibre of the critic, and excuse us from argument with 
a man incapable of interpreting popular phrases . — Patterson : 
Fables of Infidelity , p. 292. 

The Infidel Fixes His Own Standard to Judge the Bible By —The 

infidel says, u The judicious reader must therefore discriminate 
between those divine precepts of morality, which were infused 
into the minds of the Hebrew sages, and those Jewish prejudices 
which their education and character inclined them to regard 
as equally important ; and he must divest the narrative of facts 
as they actually occurred, from the national legends and tra- 
ditions which the compilers of the Pentateuch added to adorn 
the history.” 

This, it will be seen, at once raises another and very impor- 
tant question, namely : By what standard are the writings of 
the Old Testament to be judged? Or, rather, it settles the 
question by taking it for granted that every inquirer is to 
judge them according to his own notions of reason and 
truth. But this does not help me out of my difficulty. For it 
supposes me already to possess the knowledge, and the virtue, 
which a revelation from God is needed to communicate. If I 
am able, by my own reason, to construct a perfect standard of 
morals to judge the Bible by, what need have I for the Bible 
revelation ? And if I have the right to refuse obedience to any 
commands I may judge frivolous or unreasonable, before I 
know whether they came from God or not, and am bound to 
obey only those which agree with my notions of right, what 
authority has the law of God? A revelation, from God, which 
should submit its truths to be judged by the ignorance, and its 


500 


INFIDELITY. 


commands by the inclinations, of sinful men, would, by that 
very submission, declare its worthlessness. The use of a 
divine revelation is either to tell us some truth of which we 
are ignorant, or to enjoin some duty to which we are disinclined. 
— Fables of Infidelity , p. 273. 

Some Infidel Exegesis. — The utter failure of rationalistic criti- 
cism to give any rational account of the facts which must be 
admitted, to account for the existence of the Jews as a distinct 
people, is ludicrously apparent in the attempts generally made 
to explain the miraculous narratives of the Bible. The tree of 
good and evil was a poisonous plant, like the poison oak or the 
machineal tree, under which our first parents fell asleep, and 
dreamed about the temptation and fall. The shining face of 
Moses was the natural effect of electricity. Zechariah’s vision 
was the smoke of the lamps of the golden candlestick in the 
temple. The wise men of the East were some peddlers who 
presented toys to the child Jesus. The star which went before 
was their servant carrying a torch. The angels who ministered 
to Christ in his temptation were a caravan bearing provisions. 
The transfiguration was an electric storm. The plagues of Egypt, 
the passage of the Red Sea, and the miracles of the desert, 
were merely natural phenomena, dextrously used by Moses 
and Aaron to suit their purpose . — Fables of Infidelity, p. 278. 

Rousseau’s Warning. — Shun, shun, then, those who, under pre- 
tense of explaining nature, sow in the hearts of men the most 
dispiriting doctrines, whose skepticism is far more affirmative 
and dogmatical than the decided tone of their adversaries. 
Under pretense of being themselves the only people enlight- 
ened, they imperiously subject us to their magisterial decisions, 
and would fain palm upon us for the true causes of things, the 
unintelligible systems they have erected in their own heads ; 
whilst they overturn, destroy and trample under foot all that 
mankind reveres, snatch from the afflicted the only comfort 
left them in their misery, from the rich and the great the only 
curb that can restrain their passions ; tear from the heart all 
remorse of vice, all hopes of virtue, and still boast themselves 
the benefactors of mankind. “Truth,” they say, “is never 
hurtful to man.” I believe that as well as they ; and the same, 
in my opinion, is proof that what they teach is not the truth. — 
Rousseau : Fmile, Boole 4, p. 264. 


INFIDELITY. 


501 


Barker’s Appeal to Young Men. — To you, young men, who are 
beginning to entertain skeptical views, let me offer a word of 
counsel and warning. I assure you, you know not what you 
are doing. The path on which you are entering may seem 
right to you in your present state of mind ; but the end thereof 
is death! You are preparing for yourselves matter for bitter 
repentance. I have trod the dreadful path from beginning to 
end. I know it all. It is a weary and dismal road, and it leads 
to wretchedness and ruin. I have had proof of its deteriora- 
ting influence, in my own experience. Its tendency to utter 
debasement, I have studied both sides, and what is more, I 
have tried both ; and the result is a full assurance that infidel- 
ity is madness ; and that the religion of Christ is the perfection 
of wisdom and goodness . — Joseph Barker . 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


S HE Childhood of Jesus. — It is surely an astonishing proof 
that the Evangelists were guided by the spirit of God in 
telling He lived in whom God was revealed to man, when we 
gradually discover that no profane, no irreverent, even no 
imaginative hand can touch the sacred outlines of that divine 
and perfect picture without degrading and distorting it. 
Whether the Apocryphal writers meant their legends to be 
accepted as history or as fiction, it is at least certain that in 
most cases they meant to weave around the brows of Christ a 
garland of honor. Yet how do their stories dwarf, and dis- 
honor, and misinterpret Him ! How infinitely superior is the 
noble simplicity of that evangelic silence to all the theatrical 
displays of childish and meaningless omnipotence with which 
the Protevangelium, and the Pseudo-Matthew, and the 
Arabic Gospel of the Infancy are full ! They meant to honor 
Christ ; but no invention can honor Him ; . he who invents 
about Him degrades Him; he mixes the weak, imperfect, erring 
fancies of man with the unapproachable and awful purposes of 
God. The boy Christ of the Gospels is simple and sweet,, 
obedient and humble; He is subject to His parents; He is 
occupied solely with the quiet duties of His home and of His 
age ; He loves all men, and all men love the pure, and gracious, 
and noble child. Already He knows God as His Father, and 
the favor of God falls on Him softly as the morning sun-light 
or the dew of Heaven, and plays like an invisible aureole 
round His infantile and saintly brow; Unseen, save in the 
beauty of Heaven, but yet covered with silver wings, and with 
its feathers like gold, the spirit of God descended like a dove, 
and rested from infancy upon the Holy Child. — Farrar: Life 
of Christ, p. 26. 

Condition of Jews at the Coming of Jesus.— Their national inde- 
pendence was gone ; the covenant with the house of David 
was suspended, and that royal family had sunk into obscurity. 
Their high priest was appointed by the Eoman Governor for 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


503 


political ends, and was a mere tool in his hands ; the priesthood, 
as a body, was venal and proud ; the voice of prophecy had. 
long been unheard, and for the teachings of inspiration were 
substituted the sophisms and wranglings of the Rabbis; the, 
law was made, in many of its vital points, of none effect by 
traditions; the nation was divided into contending sects; a 
large party, and that comprising some of the most rich, able, 
and influential, were infidels, open or secret; some, aspiring 
after a higher piely than the observance of the law could give, 
wholly ceased to observe it, and withdrew into the wilderness 
to follow some self-devised ascetic practices; still more were 
bigots in their reverence for the letter of the law, but wholly 
ignorant of its spirit, and bitter and intolerant toward all 
whom they had the power to oppress. The people at large 
still continued to glory in their theocratic institutions, in their 
temple, in their priesthood, and deemed themselves the only 
true worshipers of God in the world. They were unmindful 
that almost everything that had constituted the peculiar glory of 
the theocracy was lost by sin ; that the Visible Glory that dwelt 
between the cherubim had departed ; that there was no more 
response by the Urim and Thummim; that the ark, with its 
attendant memorials, was no more to be found in the Holy of 
Holies; that all those supernatural interpositions that had 
marked their early history had ceased ; in short, that the whole 
nation u was turned aside like a deceitful bow.” — Andrews: Life 
of Christ , p. 122. 

Napoleon’s Speech, — I know men, and I tell you that Jesus 
Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance 
between Christ, and the founders of empires and the gods 
of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. There 
is between Christianity and whatever other religion the dis- 
tance of infinity. We can say to the authors of every other 
religion, “You are neither gods nor the agents of Deity. You 
are but missionaries of falsehood, molded from the same clay 
with the rest of mortals. You are made with all the passions 
and vices inseparable from them. Your temples and your 
priests proclaim your origin.” Such will be the judgment, the 
cry of conscience, of whoever examines the gods and the tem- 
ples of paganism. 

Paganism was never accepted, as truth, by the wise men of 
Greece; neither by Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato, Anaxagoras, 


504 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


or Pericles. On the other side, the loftiest intellects, since the 
advent of Christianity, have had faith, a living faith, a practical 
faith, in the mysteries and the doctrines of the gospel ; not only 
Bossuet, and Fenelon, who were preachers, but Descartes and 
Newton, Leibnitz and Pascal, Corneille and Racine, Charlemagne 
and Louis XIV. 

Paganism and Christianity Contrasted.— Paganism is the work 
of man. One can here read but our imbecility. What do these 
gods, so boastful, know more than other mortals'? These legis- 
lators, Greek or Roman, this Numa,this Lycurgus, these priests 
of India or of Memphis, this Confucius, this Mohammed ? Ab- 
solutely nothing. They have made a perfect chaos of morals. 
There is not one among them all who has said anything new in 
reference to our future destiny, to the soul, to the essence of 
God, to the creation. Enter the sanctuaries of paganism. You 
there find perfect chaos, a thousand contradictions, war between 
the gods, the immobility of sculpture, the division and the 
rending of the unity, the parcelling out of the divine attributes, 
mutilated or denied in their essence, the sophisms of ignorance 
and presumption, polluted fetes, impurity and abomination 
adored, all sorts of corruption festering in the thick shades, 
with the rotten wood, the idol and his priest. Does this honor 
God, or does it dishonor him ? Are these religions and these 
gods to be compared with Christianity ? 

As for me, I say, no. I summon entire Olympus to my tribunal. 
I judge the gods, but am far from prostrating myself before 
their vain images. The gods, the legislators of India and 
China, of Rome and of Athens, have nothing which can over- 
awe me. Not that I am unjust to them. No ! I appreciate 
them, because I know their value. Undeniably princes, whose 
existence is fixed in the memory as an image of order and of 
power, as the ideal of force and beauty, such princes were no 
ordinary men. 

Lycurgus and Others Compared with Jesus.— I see in Lycurgus, 
Numa and Mohammed only legislators, who, having the first 
rank in the State, have sought the best solution of the social 
problem ; but I see nothing there which reveals divinity. They 
themselves have never raised their pretensions so high. As 
for me, I recognize the gods and these great men as beings like 
myself. They have performed a lofty part in their times as I 
have done. Nothing announces them divine. On the contrary, 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


505 


there are numerous resemblances between them and myself; 
foibles and errors which ally them to me and to humanity. 

It is not so with Christ. Everything in him astonishes me. 
His spirit overawes me, and his will confounds me. Between 
him and whoever else in the world there is no possible term of 
comparison. He is truly a being by himself. His ideas and his 
sentiments, the truths which he announces, his manner of con- 
vincing, are not explained either by human organization or by 
the nature of things. 

His birth and the history of his life; the profundity of his 
doctrine, which grapples the mightiest difficulties, and which is 
of those difficulties the most admirable solution ; his gospel, 
his apparition, his empire, his march across the ages and the 
realms — everything is for me a prodigy, a mystery insoluble, 
which plunges me into a reverie from which I cannot escape — 
a mystery which is there before my eyes — a mystery which I 
can neither deny nor explain. Here I see nothing human. 

The nearer I approach, the more carefully I examine, every- 
thing is above me — everything remains grand, of a grandeur 
which overpowers. His religion is a revelation from an intelli- 
gence which certainly is not that of man. There is there a 
profound originality, which has created a series of words and 
of maxims before unknown. 

What His System Consists In, — Jesus borrowed nothing from 
our sciences. One can absolutely find nowhere, but in him 
alone, the imitation or the example of his life. He is not a 
philosopher, since he advances by miracles, and from the com- 
mencement his disciples worshiped Him. He persuades them 
far more by an appeal to the heart than by any display of 
method and of logic. Neither did he impose upon them any 
preliminary studies, or any knowledge of letters. All his 
religion consists in believing. 

In fact, the sciences and philosophy avail nothing for salva- 
tion; and Jesus came into the world to reveal the mysteries of 
heaven and the laws of the Spirit. Also, he has nothing to do 
but with the soul, and to that alone he brings his gospel. The 
soul is sufficient for him, as he is sufficient for the soul. Before 
him, the soul was nothing. Matter and Time were the masters 
of the world. At his voice everything returns to order. 
Science and philosophy become secondary. The soul has 
reconquered its sovereignty. All the scholastic scaffolding 
falls, as an edif ce ruined, before one single word— Faith. 


506 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


What a master and what a word which can effect such a 
revolution ! With what authority does he teach men to pray ; 
he imposes his belief. And, no one, thus far, has been able to 
contradict him ; first, because the gospel contains the purest 
morality, and also because the doctrine which it contains of 
obscurity, is only the proclamation and the truth of that which 
exists where no eye can see, and no reason can penetrate. 
Who is the insensate who will say No to the intrepid voyager 
who recounts the marvels of the icy peaks which he alone had 
the boldness to visit? Christ is that bold voyager. One can 
doubtless remain incredulous. But no one can venture to say, 
It is not so. 

Moreover, consult the philosophers upon those mysterious 
questions which relate to the essence of man, and the essence 
of religion. What is their response? Where is the man of 
good sense that has ever learned anything from the system of 
metaphysics, ancient or modern, which is not truly a vain and 
pompous ideology, without any connection with our domestic 
life, with our passions ? Unquestionably, with skill in thinking, 
one can seize the key of the philosophy of Socrates and Plato. 
But to do this, it is necessary to be a metaphysician ; and, 
moreover, with years of study, one must possess special aptitude. 
But good sense alone, the heart, an honest spirit, are sufficient 
to comprehend Christianity. 

Neither Ideology nor Metaphysics. — The Christian religion is 
neiter ideology nor metaphysics, but a practical rule which 
directs the actions of man, corrects him, counsels him, and 
assists him in all his conduct. The Bible contains a complete 
series of facts and of historical men, to explain time and 
eternity, such as no other religion has to offer. If this is not 
the true religion, one is very excusable in being deceived, for 
everything in it is grand and worthy of God. I search in vain 
in history to find the similar to Jesus Christ, or anything which 
can approach the gospel. Neither history, nor humanity, nor 
the ages, nor nature, offer me anything with which I am able 
to compare or to explain it. Here everything is extraordinary. 
The more I consider the gospel, the more I am assured that 
there is nothing there which is not beyond the march of events, 
and above the human mind. Even the impious themselves 
have never dared to deny the sublimity of the gospel, which 
inspires them with a sort of compulsory veneration. What 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


507 


happiness that book procures for those who believe it ! what 
marvels those admire there who reflect upon it ! 

All the words there are imbedded and joined one upon 
another, like the stones of an edifice. The spirit which binds 
these words together is a divine cement, which now reveals 
the sense, and again vails it from the mind. Each phrase has 
a sense complete, which traces the perfection of unity and 
the profundity of the whole. Book unique, where the mind 
finds a moral duty before unknown, and an idea of the Supreme 
superior even to that which creation suggests. Who, but God, 
could produce that type, that idea of perfection, equally 
exclusive and original ? 

Christ, having but a few weak disciples, was condemned to 
death; he died the object of the wrath of the Jewish priests, 
and of the contempt of the nation, and abandoned and denied 
by his own disciples. 

His Prophecy. — “ They are about to take me and crucify me,” 
said he. “I shall be abandoned of all the world. My chief 
disciple will deny me at the commencement of my punishment. 
I shall be left to the wicked. But then divine justice being 
satisfied, original sin expiated by my sufferings, the bond of 
man to God will be renewed, and my death will be the life of 
my disciples. Then they will be more strong without me than 
with me ; for they will see me rise again. I shall ascend to the 
skies ; and I shall send to them, from Heaven, a Spirit who will 
instruct them. The spirit of the cross will enable them to 
understand my gospel. In fine, they will believe it; they will 
preach it ; and they will convert the worid.” 

And this strange promise, so aptly called by Paul <£ the fool- 
ishness of the cross,” this prediction of one miserably crucified, 
is literally accomplished. And the mode of accomplishment is 
perhaps more prodigious than the promise. 

It is not a day nor a battle which has decided it. Is it the 
lifetime of a man ? Ho ! It is a war, a long combat of three 
hundred years, commenced by the apostles and continued by 
their successors, and by succeeding generations of Christians. 
In this conflict all the kings and all the forces of the earth 
were arrayed on one side. Upon the other I see no army, but 
a mysterious energy ; individuals scattered here and there, in 
all parts of the globe, having no other rallying sign than a 
common faith in the mysteries of the cross. 


508 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


The Symbolic Cross. — What a mysterious symbol ! the instru- 
ment of the punishment of the Man-God. His disciples were 
armed with it. u The Christ, v they said , u God has died for the 
salvation of men ! v What a strife, what a tempest, these simple 
words have raised around the humble standard of the punish- 
ment of the Man-God. On the one side, we see rage and all 
the furies of hatred and violence. On the other, there is 
gentleness, moral courage, infinite resignation. For three hun- 
dred years spirit struggled against the brutality of sense, 
conscience against despotism, the soul against the body, virtue 
against all the vices. The blood of Christians flowed in tor- 
rents. They died kissing the hand that slew them. The soul 
alone protested, while the body surrendered itself to all 
tortures. Everywhere Christians fell, and everywhere they 
triumphed. 

Caesar and Alexander Compared with Jesus.— You speak of 
Caesar, of Alexander ; of their conquests, and of the enthusiasm 
which they enkindled in the hearts of their soldiers. But can 
you conceive of a dead man making conquests, with an army 
faithful and entirely devoted to his memory. My armies have 
forgotten me, even while living, as the Carthaginian army 
forgot Hannibal. Such is our power ! a single battle crushes 
us, and adversity scatters our friends! 

Can you conceive of Caesar as the eternal emperor of the 
Roman senate, and from the depths of the mausoleum govern- 
ing the empire, watching over the destinies of Rome ? Such is the 
history of the invasion and conquest of the world by Christi- 
anity. Such is the power of the God of the Christians. And 
such is the perpetual miracle of the progress of the faith and of 
the government of his Church. Nations pass away ; thrones 
erumble; but the Church remains. What is then the power 
which has protected his Church, thus assailed by the furious 
billows of rage and the hostilities of ages. Whose is the arm 
which for eighteen hundred years has protected the Church 
from so many storms which have threatened to engulf it? 

Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and myself founded empires. 
But upon what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon 
force . Jesus Christ alone founded his empire upon love ; and 
at this hour millions of men would die for him. In every other 
existence but that of Christ how many imperfections? Where 
is the character which has not yielded, vanquished by obstacles ? 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


509 


Where is the individual who has never been governed by cir- 
cumstances or places, who has never succumbed to the influence 
of the times, who has never compounded with any customs or 
passions ? From the first day to the last he is the same, always 
the same; majestic and simple, infinitely firm and infinitely 
gentle. 

Truth should embrace the universe. Such is Christianity, the 
only religion which destroys sectional prejudice, the only one 
which proclaims the unity and the absolute brotherhood of the 
whole human family, the only one which is purely spiritual ; in 
fine, the only one which assigns to all, without distinction, for 
a true country, the bosom of the Creator, God. Christ proved 
that he was the Son of the Eternal, by his disregard of time. 
All his doctrines signify one only, and the same, Eternity. 

What Christ Proposes to Our Faith.— It is true that Christ pro- 
poses to our faith a series of mysteries. He commands, with 
authority, that we should believe them, giving no other reason 
than those tremendous words, “ I am God.” He declares it. 
What an abyss he creates, by that declaration, between himself, 
and all the fabricators of religion. 

What audacity, what sacrilege, what blasphemy, if it were not 
true ! I say more ; the universal triumph of an affirmation of 
that kind, if the triumph were not really that of God 
himself, would be a plausible excuse, and the proof of 
atheism. 

Harmonizes With Nature in So Doing. — Moreover, in propound- 
ing mysteries, Christ is harmonious with nature, which is pro- 
foundly mysterious. From whence do I come f Whither do I 
go? Who am I? Human life is a mystery in its origin, its 
organization, and its end. In man and out of man, in nature, 
everthing is mysterious. And can one wish that religion should 
not be mysterious ? The creation and the destiny of the world 
are an unfathomable abyss, as also is the creation and the 
destiny of each individual. Christianity at least does not 
evade these great questions. It meets them boldly. And 
our doctrines are a solution of them for every one who 
believes. 

The Contents of the Gospel.— The gospel possesses a secret 
virtue, a mysterious efficacy, a warmth which penetrates and 
soothes the heart. One finds, in meditating upon it, that 
which one experiences in contemplating the heavens. The 


510 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


gospel is not a book; it is a living being with an action, a 
power, which invades everything which opposes its exten- 
sion. Behold it upon this table, this book, surpassing all 
others (here the Emperor deferentially placed his hand upon 
it); I never omit to read it, and every day with the same 
pleasure. 

No where is to be found such a series of beautiful ideas, 
admirable moral maxims, which pass before us like the battal- 
ions of a celestial army, and which produce in our soul the 
same emotion which one experiences in contemplating the 
infinite expanse of the skies, resplendent in a summer’s night, 
with all the brilliance of the stars. Not only is our mind 
absorbed, it is controlled, and the soul can never go astray 
with this book for its guide. Once master of our spirit, the 
faithful gospel loves us. God even is our friend, our father, 
and truly *our God. The mother has no greater care for the 
infant whom she nurses. 

What a proof of the divinity of Christ ! With an empire so 
absolute, he has but one single end, the spiritual melioration of 
individuals, the purity of conscience, the union to that which is 
true, the holiness of the soul. 

Christ speaks, and at once generations become His by 
stricter, closer ties than those of blood ; by the most sacred, 
the most indissoluble of all unions. He lights up the flame of 
a love, which consumes self-love, which prevails over every 
other love. The founders of other religions never conceived of 
this mystical love, which is the essence of Christianity and is 
beautifully called charity. In every attempt to effect this 
thing, namely, to make Himself beloved, man deeply feels his 
own impotence, so that Christ’s greatest miracle undoubtedly is, 
the reign of charity. 

Contrasts Christ with Himself. — I have so inspired multitudes 
that they would die for me. God forbid that I should form 
any comparison between the enthusiam of the soldier 
and Christian charity, which are as unlike as their cause. 

But after all, my presence was necessary ; the lightning of 
my eye, my voice, a word from me ; then the sacred fire was 
kindled in their hearts. I do indeed possess the secret of 
this magical power, which lifts the soul, but I could never 
impart it to any one. None of my generals ever learnt it from 
me. Nor have I the means of perpetuating my name and love 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


511 


for me, in the hearts of men, and to effect these things without 
physical means. 

Now that I am at St. Helena; now that I am alone, chained 
upon this rock, who fight and win empires for me? who are the 
courtiers of my misfortune? vdio thinks of me? who makes 
efforts for me in Europe ? where are my friends ? Yes ! two or 
three, whom your fidelity immortalizes, you share, you console 
my exile. 

Yes ! our life once shone with all the brilliance of the 
diadem and the throne ; and yours, Betrand, reflected that 
splendor, as the dome of the Invalides, gilt by us, reflects 
the rays of the sun. But disasters came; the gold gradu- 
ally became dim. The rain of misfortune and outrage 
with which I am daily deluged had effaced all the brightness. 
We are mere lead, now, General Betrand, and soon I shall be 
in my grave. 

The Fate of Great Men. — Such is the fate of great men ! So it 
was with Caesar and Alexander. And I, too, am forgotten. 
And the name of a conqueror and an emperor is a college 
theme ! Our exploits are tasks given to pupils by their tutors, 
who sit in judgment upon us, awarding us censure or praise. 
And mark what is soon to become of me ; assassinated by the 
English oligarchy, I die before my time ; and my dead body, 
too, must return to the earth, to become food for worms. 
Behold the destiny, near at hand, of him who has been called 
the great Napoleon. What an abyss between my deep misery 
and the eternal reign of Christ, which is proclaimed, loved, 
adored, and which is extending over all the earth. Is this to 
die ? Is it not rather to live ? The death of Christ ! It is the 
death of God. — Napoleon's Speech on St. Helena. Liddon's 
Divinity of Christ. Also , Abbott's Life of Napoleon. 

Rousseau’s Eulogy. — I confess to you that the majesty of the 
Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the 
gospel has its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of 
our philosophers with all their pomp of diction ; how mean, 
how contemptible are they, compared with the Scripture ! Is it 
possible that a book, at once so simple and sublime, should be 
merely the work of man ? Is it possible that the sacred per- 
sonage, whose history it contains, should be himself a mere 
man? Do we find that he assumed the tone of an enthusiast 
or ambitious secretary ? What sweetness, what purity in his 


512 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


manners! What an affecting gracefulness in his delivery! 
What sublimity in his maxims ! What profound wisdom in his 
discourses ! What presence of mind in his replies ! How 
great the command over his passions ! Where is the man, 
where the philosopher, who could so live and so die, without 
weakness, and without ostentation? When Plato described 
his imaginary good man with all the shame of guilt, yet merit- 
ing the highest rewards of virtue, he describes exactly the 
character of Jesus Christ; the resemblance is so striking that 
all the Christian fathers perceived it. — Rousseau . 

He Compares Socrates with Jesus. — What prepossession, what 
blindness must it be to compare (Socrates) the son of Sophro- 
niscus to (Jesus) the son of Mary ! What an infinite dispro- 
portion is there between them ! Socrates, dying without pain 
or ignominy, easily supported his character to the last ; and, if 
his death, however easy, had not crowned his life, it might 
have been doubted whether Socrates, with all his wisdom, was 
anything more than a vain sophist. He invented, it is said, the 
theory of morals. Others, however, had before put them into 
practice ; he had only to say, therefore, what they had done, 
and to reduce their examples to precept. But where could Jesus 
learn, among his competitors, that pure and sublime morality, 
of which he only has given us both precept and example ? The 
death of Socrates, peaceably philosophizing with his friends, 
appears the most agreeable that could be wished for ; that of 
Jesus expiring in the midst of agonizing pains, abused, insulted, 
and accused by a whole nation, is the most horrible that could 
be feared. Socrates, on receiving the cup of poison, blessed 
the weeping executioner who administered it; but Jesus, in 
the midst of excruciating tortures, prayed for his merciless 
tormentors. Yes ! if the life and death of Socrates were those 
of a sage, the life and death of Jesus were those of a God. 
Shall we suppose the evangelic history a mere fiction ? 
Indeed, my friend, it bears not the marks of fiction ; on the 
contrary, the history of Socrates, which nobody presumes to 
doubt, is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such a 
supposition, in fact, only shifts the difficulty without obviating it ; 
it is more inconceivable, that a number of persons should agree 
to write such a history, than that one only should furnish the 
subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the dic- 
tion, and strangers to the morality contained in the gospel, the 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


513 


marks of whose truths are so striking and inimitable, that the 
inventor would be a more astonishing character than the hero. 
— Rousseau’s {{ Confessions.” 

Chubb’s licw of Jesus. — In Christ we have an example of a 
quiet and peaceable spirit, of a becoming modesty and sobriety, 
just, honest, upright and sincere: and, above all, of a most gra- 
cious and benevolent temper and behavior ; One, who did no 
wrong, no injury to any man, in whose mouth was no guile; 
who went about doing good, not only by his ministry, but also 
in curing all manner of diseases among the people. His life 
was a beautiful picture of human nature in its native purity and 
simplicity ; and showed at once what excellent creatures men 
would be, when under the influence and power of that gospel 
which he preached unto them. — Chubb’s True Gospel of Jesus 
Christ . 

Renan on the Kingdom of Christ. — His Kingdom of God was 
doubtless the approaching apocalypse, which was to be un- 
folded in the heavens. But still it was, and probably above 
all, the Kingdom of the soul created by the liberty and the filial 
feeling which the virtuous man experiences upon the bosom of 
his Father. It was pure religion, with no rites, no temples, no 
priests ; it was the moral judgment of the world, awarded to the 
conscience of the righteous and to the arms of the people. This 
is what was made to live, this is what has lived. When at the 
end of a century of vain expectation, the materialistic hope of 
a speedy destruction of the world was exhausted, the real King- 
dom of God was made clear.— Renan’s Life of Jesus , p. 250. 

Sings His Requiem. — Repose now in thy glory, noble founder, 
Thy work is finished ; thy divinity is established. Fear no more 
to see the edifice of thy labors fall by any fault. Henceforth, 
beyond the reach of frailty, thou shalt witness from the heights 
of divine peace, the infinite results of thy acts. At the price of 
a few hours of suffering, which did not even reach thy grand 
soul, thou hast bought the most complete immortality. For 
thousands of years, the world will depend on thee ! Banner of 
our contests, thou shalt be the standard about which the hottest 
battle will be given. A thousand times more alive, a thousand 
times more beloved, since thy death than during thy passage 
here below, thou shalt become the corner-stone of humanity so 
entirely, that to tear thy name from this world would be to rend 
it to its foundations. Between thee and God, there will no 
Gl 


514 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


longer be any distinction. Complete conqueror of death, take 
possession of thy Kingdom, whither shalt follow thee, by the 
royal road which thou hast traced, ages of worshipers. 
Renan's Life of Jesus f _p. 351. 

In the First Rank. — In the first rank of this grand family of 
the true sons of God we must place Jesus. Jesus has no vis- 
ions. God does not speak to him from without. God is in him. 
He feels that he is with God, and he draws from his heart what 
he says of his Father. He lives in the bosom of God by unin- 
terrupted communication. He does not see him, but he under- 
stands him without need of thunder and burning bush like 
Moses, of a revealing tempest like Job, of an oracle like the 
old Greek sages, of a familiar genius like Socrates, or of an 
angel Gabriel like Mohammed. — Renan's Life of Jesus. 

His Sentiments Are Ours. — The sentiment which Jesus intro- 
duced into the world is really ours. His perfect idealism is 
the highest rule of unworldly and virtuous life. He has created 
that heaven of free souls, in which is found what we ask in 
vain on earth, the perfect nobility of the children of God, abso- 
lute purity, total abstraction from the contamination of the world, 
that freedom, in short, which material society shuts out as an 
impossibility, and which finds all its amplitude only in the 
domain of thought. The great master of those who take refuge 
in this ideal Kingdom of God, is Jesus still. He first pro- 
claimed the kingliness of the spirit. He first said, at least, by 
his acts, “ My kingdom is not of this world.” The foundation 
of the true religion is indeed his work. After him, there is 
nothing more but to develop and fructify. — Renan's Life of 
Jesus, p. 365. 

Degrades Jesus to a Demi-God.— As for us eternal children, con- 
demned to weakness, we who labor without harvesting, and 
shall never see the fruit of what we have sown, let us bow 
before these demi-gods. They knew what we do not know ; to 
create, to affirm, to act. Shall originality be born anew, or 
shall the world henceforth be content to follow the paths 
opened by the bold creatures of the ancient ages 1 We know 
not. But whatever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus 
will never be surpassed. His worship will grow young without 
ceasing ; his legend will call forth tears without end ; his suf- 
ferings will melt the noblest hearts ; all ages will proclaim that 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


515 


among the sons of men there is none born greater than Jesus. 
— Renan’s Life of Jesus, p. 376. 

The Plan Jesus Adopted. — Christ announced himself as the 
Founder and Legislator of a new society, and as the Supreme 
Judge of men. Now, by what means did he procure that these 
immense pretensions should be allowed $ He might have done 
it by sheer power; he might have adopted persuasion, and 
pointed out the merits of the scheme and of the legislation he 
proposed to introduce. But he adopted a third plan, which 
had the effect, not merely of securing obedience, but of exciting 
enthusiasm and devotion. He laid men under an immense 
obligation. He convinced them that he was a person of altogether 
transcendent greatness, one who needed nothing at their hands, 
one whom it was impossible to benefit by conferring riches, or 
fame, or dominion upon him, and that, being so great, he had 
devoted himself, of mere benevolence, to their good. He showed 
them that for their sakes he lived a hard and laborious life, and 
exposed himself to the utmost malice of powerful men. They 
saw him hungry, though they believed him able to turn the stones 
into bread ; they saw his royal pretensions spurned, though they 
believed that he could in a moment take into his hand all 
the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them ; they saw his 
life in danger ; they saw him at last expire in agonies, though 
they believed that had he so willed it, no danger could harm 
him, and that, had he thrown himself from the topmost pinna- 
cle of the temple, he would have been softly received in the 
arms of ministering angels. 

Witnessing his sufferings, and convinced by the miracles they 
saw him work, that they were voluntarily endured, men’s hearts 
were touched, and pity for weakness blending strangely with 
wondering admiration of unlimited power, an agitation of grati- 
tude, sympathy and astonishment, such as nothing else could 
ever excite, sprang up in them, and when, turning from his 
deeds to his words, they found this very self-denial which had 
guided his own life, prescribed as the principle which should 
guide theirs, gratitude broke forth in joyful obedience, self- 
denial produced self-denial, and the law and the Law Giver 
together were enshrined in their inmost hearts for inseparable 
veneration . — Ecce Homo 7 pp. 60-1. 

Jesus’ Course to the Jews and the Disciples.— How stands the 


516 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


case with Jesus? Bred a Jewish peasant or carpenter, he 
issues from obscurity and claims for himself a divine office, 
a superhuman dignity, such as had not been imagined; and in 
no instance does he fall below the character. The peasant, and 
still more the Jew, wholly disappears. We feel that a new 
being, of a new order of mind, is taking a part in human affairs. 
There is a native tone of grandeur and authority in his teach- 
ing. He speaks as being related to the whole human race. His 
mind never shrinks within the ordinary limits of human agency. 
A narrower sphere than the world never enters his thoughts. 
He speaks in a natural, spontaneous style of accomplishing the 
most arduous and important change in human affairs. This 
unlabored manner of expressing great thoughts is particularly 
worthy of attention. You never hear from Jesus that swelling, 
pompous, ostentatious language which almost necessarily 
springs from an attempt to sustain a character above our 
powers. He talks of his glories as one to whom they were 
familiar, and of his intimacy and oneness with God as simply 
as a child speaks of his connection with his parents. He speaks 
of saving and judging the world, of drawing all men to himself, 
and of giving everlasting life as we speak of the ordinary pow- 
ers which we exert. He makes no set harangues about the 
grandeur of his office and character. His consciousness of it 
gives a hue to his whole language, breaks out in indirect, un- 
designed expressions, showing that it was the deepest and most 
familiar of his convictions. This argument is only to be under- 
stood by reading the Gospels with a wakeful mind and heart. 
It does not lie on their surface, and it is the stronger for lying 
beneath it. When I read these books with care, when I trace 
the unaffected majesty which runs through the life of Jesus, 
and see him never falling below his sublime claims amidst 
poverty and scorn, and in his last agony, I have a feeling of the 
reality of his character which I cannot express. I feel that the 
Jewish carpenter could no more have conceived and sustained 
this character under motives of imposture than an infant’s arm 
could repeat the deeds of Hercules, or his unawakened intel- 
lect comprehend and rival the matchless works of genius. — 
Charming’ s Works, p. 305. 

Christ Not a Philosophic Conception.— The humble village in 
which he was brought up is known to all; He lived the 
common life of the lower classes of his people ; He was des- 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


517 


pised because he sat at meat with publicans. He sought no 
distinction by extravagant self-mortification, nor did he make 
any appeal, like Mahomet, to the warlike passions. He be- 
queathed to His disciples, not the scimitar and its conquests, 
but the cross and its reproach. In the conditions of every day 
life was displayed that moral perfection which is without a 
parallel, because it united all the qualities elsewhere found 
apart. 

Can it be supposed that such a type as this, so human in its 
divine beauty, was formed from the combination of the most 
diverse elements of religion and philosophy, in an age of uni- 
versal fusion ¥ Without dwelling again on the argument rest- 
ing on facts, which we have drawn from the history of other 
religions, to set aside this explanation, we will only ask whether 
such a form as that of Jesus resembles the statue of gold, brass, 
and clay, which the King of Babylon beheld in the famous dream 
interpreted by Daniel. Such a mingling of heterogeneous ele- 
ments could have resulted only in a monstrous idol, for which 
a pagoda could scarcely have been found. The Christ of the 
Gospels did not come forth from the crucibles of Alexandrine 
philosophy. He lived , and lived as He is made known to us 
by his apostles. He satisfies at once our aspirations after the 
ideal by his perfect holiness, and our deep needs of consolation 
and restoration by His sufferings and sacrifice. He meets us 
in our greatness and our misery, and therefore He is called the 
Savior of the world. Such is our conclusion. — Pressense: Life 
and Times of Jesus, 

What Effect Christ’s Coming Had On the World. — It must be 
remembered that Jesus Christ had been the absorbing theme 
of all ages prior to his advent. This circumstance alone marks 
him off from all other men. The hope of his coming had kept 
society together, preserving it from intellectual and moral 
annihilation. When Christ came, long chapters of prophecy 
were to be closed like gates through which a conqueror had 
passsed. In Christ the prayers of many ages were to be 
answered. The prophecies respecting him were marked by 
that strange dualism which attached to his life ; taken sepa- 
rately as mere statements of facts, they are contradictory, but 
looked at in the light of the dual nature which he claimed 
there is immediate and perfect reconciliation. The great para- 
doxes of prophecy were harmonized in the greater paradox of 


518 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


the life. Christ was “a root out of a dry ground,” yet he was 
“the flower of Jesse and the plant of renown;” “he was 
despised and rejected of men,” yet he was “the desire of all 
nations;” he was “without form and comeliness,” yet he was 
“ the fairest among ten thousand and altogether lovely ; ” he was 
“ the child,” yet he was “ the Ancient of Days.” # * * * 

This fact does much to clear the field of intruders, and to nar- 
row the ground of competition. Christ distinctly threw himself 
upon prophecy, and challenged scribe and doctor and Rabbi to 
“search the Scripture.” The empiric may have brilliant visions 
of the future, but it is perilous for him to challenge his con- 
temporaries to go far back in search of his ancestral roots. 

What He Must Still Do to Hold Our Confidence.— If Christ is to 
command our confidence, he must continue to be what his 
claim to the prophetic past, and the alleged preternatural con- 
ditions of his incarnation necessitate. A common man cannot 
be tolerated after so uncommon a beginning. If he be only a 
young man of high and most ambitious spirit, he has chosen a 
most perilous course, a course which must break down some- 
where. It cannot be an easy task hypocritically to represent 
God upon the earth, without now and again letting the mask 
slip aside. How can the finite steadily carry the Infinite, 
when the Infinite is at war with him? Christ must be more 
than a good man, or worse than the worst man. If he be not 
God, he is the enemy of God. — Dr. Parker. 

What Comes of Making Only a Man Out of Jesus.— Those who 
do not believe in Jesus, nor admit the supernatural character 
of His person, of His life, and of His work, are free of this 
difficulty of giving adequate expression, in human language, to 
the intimate and continual intermixture of the divine and 
human in Christ. Having beforehand suppressed the divinity 
and the miracles, they see in the history of Jesus Christ noth- 
ing more than an ordinary history, which they narrate and 
explain like any other biography of man. But they fall into a 
far different difficulty, and wreck themselves on a far different 
rock. The supernatural being and power of Jesus Christ may 
be disputed; but the perfection, the sublimity of His actions, 
and of His precepts, of His life, and of His moral law, are 
incontestable, and, in effect, not only are they not contested, 
but they are admired and celebrated enthusiastically and com- 
placently. It would seem as if it were desired to restore to 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


519 


Jesus Christ as a mere man the superiority of which they 
deprive Him in refusing to see in Him the Godhead. But 
then, what incoherence, what contradictions, what falsehood, 
what moral impossibility, in His history, such as they make it! 
What a series of suppositions, irreconcilable with the facts 
which they admit! This man, they make so perfect and 
sublime, becomes by turns a dreamer or a charlatan, at once 
dupe and deceiver — dupe of His own mystical enthusiasm in 
believing his own miracles, willful deceiver in tampering with 
evidence in order to accredit himself. The history of Jesus 
Christ is thus but a tissue of fables and falsehood ; and, never- 
theless, the her© of this history remains, perfect, sublime, 
incomparable — the greatest genius, the noblest heart, that the 
world ever saw; the type of virtue and moral beauty; the 
supreme and rightful Chief of mankind. And His disciples, in 
their turn, justly admirable, have braved everything, suffered 
everything, in order to abide faithful to Him, and to accomplish 
His work ; and, in effect, the work has been accomplished — the 
Pagan world has become Christian, and the whole world has 
nothing better to do than follow the example. 

What a contradictory and insolvable problem they present to 
us, instead of the one they labor so hard to suppress ! 

History Reposes on Two Foundations. — History reposes upon two 
foundations — the positive evidence or documents concerning 
the facts and persons, and presumptive evidence or moral prob- 
abilities resulting from the connection of facts and the action 
of persons. These two foundations are entirely wanting in the 
history of Jesus Christ, such as it is related, or rather con- 
structed , in these days. It is, on the one hand, an evident and 
shocking contradiction with the testimony of the men who 
saw Jesus Christ, or of the men who lived near those who had 
seen Him; on the other hand, it equally conflicts with the 
natural laws presiding over the actions of men and the course 
of events. This does not deserve the name of historical 
criticism ; it is a philosophical system and a romantic narrative, 
substituted for the substantial proof of the moral evidence ; it 
is a Jesus false, and impossible, made by the hand of man, 
pretending to dethrone the real living Jesus Christ the Son of 
God. 

The choice lies between the system and the mystery; be- 
tween the romance of man and the design of God. — Guizot's 
Meditations, jpp . 324-7. 


520 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


The Skeptic’s Task Set Forth. — Hard is the task of the skeptic 
who denies the reality of the death of Cmsar in the senate-house 
or of the existence of Alfred, or of the conquest of William the 
Norman; harder by far the task of the skeptic who denies the 
realities of the life and death of Jesus. For, in this case, he 
must suppose that all history, secular and sacred, has been 
corrupted and is unreliable ; he must suppose that Christianity 
sprang up without any adequate cause, and at a time unknown; 
he must suppose that it made its way in the world on what was 
known to be falsehood ; he must suppose that men everywhere 
embraced the system manifestly against their own interests, 
and with nothing to satisfy them of its truth; he must leave un- 
explained the conduct of thousands of martyrs, many of them 
of no mean name in philosophy and in social rank ; he must 
explain how it was that acute and subtle enemies, like Celsus, 
Porphyry, and Julian, did not make short work of the argument 
by denying the truth of the main facts of the Christian history ; 
he must explain the origin of the numerous monuments in the 
world which have been reared on the supposition of the truths 
of the great facts of Christian history — the ancient temples 
whose ruins are scattered everywhere, the tombs and inscrip- 
tions in the Catacombs at Rome, the sculptures and paintings 
which have called forth the highest efforts of genius in the 
early and the medieval ages, and the books that have been 
written on the supposition that the religion had the origin 
ascribed to it in the New Testament; he must explain the 
observance of the first day of the week in so many lands, 
and for so many ages, in commemoration of the belief that 
Christ rose from the dead; he must explain the observance 
of the day which is supposed to commemorate the birth of 
the Redeemer, as one would have to explain the observance 
of the birthday of Washington, on the supposition that Wash- 
ington was a “myth,” and the observance of the Fourth of July 
on the supposition that what has been regarded as a history of 
the American Revolution was a romance; he must explain the 
ordinance kept up in memory of his death for nearly two thou- 
sand years on the supposition that, the death of Christ never 
occurred on the cross at all; he must explain the honor and 
the homage done to the cross everywhere — as a standard in 
war, as a symbol of faith, as a charm or an amulet, as an orna- 
ment worn by beauty and piety, as reared on high to mark the 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


521 


place where God is worshiped, as an emblem of self-sacrifice, 
of love, of unsullied purity — the cross, in itself more ignomin- 
ious than the guillotine or the gibbet — for why should men do 
such things with a gibbet if all is imaginary? Can the fossil 
remains of the Old World, the ferns in the coal-beds, and the 
forms of fishes imbedded in the rocks, and the bones of mam- 
moths, and the skeletons of the Ichthyo saurian and Plesio- 
saurian races be explained on the supposition that such vege- 
tables, and such land and marine monsters never lived? Will 
the geologist, who happens to be an infidel in religion, allow us 
to urge this in regard to those apparent records of the former 
history of the world? — Barnes’ Evidences, pp. 72-3. 

An Irresistible Argument.— I have dwelt thus on the trans- 
cendent pretensions of Jesus, because there is an argument 
here for his superhumanity which cannot be resisted. For 
eighteen hundred years these prodigious assumptions have 
been published and preached to a world that is quick to lay 
hold of conceit, and bring down the lofty airs of pretenders, 
and yet, during all this time, whole nations of people, compos- 
ing as well the learned and powerful as the ignorant and 
humble, have paid their homage to the name of Jesus, detect- 
ing never any disagreement between his merits and his preten- 
sions, offended never by any thought of his extravagance. In 
which we have absolute proof that he practically maintains his 
amazing assumptions. * * * * I do not recollect 

any skeptic or infidel who has even thought to accuse him, as 
a conceited person, or to assault him in this, the weakest and 
absurdest, if not the strongest and holiest, point of his 
character . — BushnelVs Nature and Supernatural, p. 291. 

The Formation of Myths.— We now come to the principal ques- 
tion as to the possibility of the formation of myths. In this 
respect it is not difficult to point out a number of historical and 
psychological impossibilities and internal contradictions in 
Strauss’ positions. He will scarcely deny that the soil in which 
myths grow is the childhood of nations. How come myths to 
spring up so luxuriantly among the Jews at the time of Christ, 
destitute as their nationality was of all that is childlike, and 
well nigh arrived at the hoary goal of its development. Are 
we to believe that after prophecy had so long been silent, and at 
a time when the chosen people and the world in general were 
in a state of spiritless languor, the poetic fancy of a few poor 
Jews should suddenly have made this mighty effort? 


522 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


Improbabilities —The improbability increases when we com- 
pare the character of the Gospel narratives with that of myths 
in other quarters. Consider the myths of Greece and Egypt, 
hovering as they do between memory and invention, between 
heaven and earth, between God and matter, between the natural 
and unnatural. Consider the gigantic, bloody, monstrous fables 
concerning the fantastic gods of India; consider the dark, 
mist-woven forms of the old Germanic and Scandinavian 
mythology, without fixed outlines or clearly-defined personali- 
ties ; and contrast with these the clear, calm, holy, self-contained, 
self-consistent, and well-defined figure of Christ in the Gospels, 
and say wherein lies the slightest resemblance between them? 

Moreover, as being a reflection of the life of nature, myths 
everywhere bear a local and national impress. According to 
the characteristics of people and country, they are differently 
developed in gladsome Greece, in arid India, and in the inhos- 
pitable North. The purport of the gospels, on the other hand, 
is universally human; it is adaptable to every nation, every 
clime, every stage of time or cultivation. So little is it exclu- 
sively Jewish that it constantly contradicts the prejudices of 
the nation from which it has originated. * * * * Further, 

it has been objected, with truth, that myths know nothing of 
chronology; they are prone to mix up times, places, and 
persons. In the gospels, on the contrary, from Luke i: 5, 
onwards, we find a series of exact data as to times, places and 
persons, and a continuous reference to contemporaneous 
Roman and Jewish history. * * * * To all this we add 
another difficulty of considerable weight, viz : that the forma- 
tion of myths is always a lengthy process, requiring consider- 
able time. Homer’s mythical account of the fall of Troy did 
not appear till some two hundred years after the event. But 
the oldest of our Gospels appeared, as we have seen, before 
the fall of Jerusalem— hardly a generation after the death of 
Christ. Therefore, a portion of these myths, at least, must 
have taken their rise amongst the disciples themselves. Were 
these good people so utterly destitute of all historical sense 
and feeling? Had they not been taught by Christ himself, in 
the Sermon on the Mount, in the discourses which Strauss 
acknowledges as genuine, to distinguish clearly between divine 
revelation in the law and the subsequent human additions? 
Was not this calculated to implant some historical feeling in 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


523 


the disciples, and to sharpen their perception of the difference 
between firmly established truths and human fictions. Or if 
the disciples were so simple and superstitious as not to be able 
to understand their Master, is it not incomprehensible how he 
came to choose such inefficient men? — Christlieb : Modern 
Doubt , pp. 403-5. 

Represents the Highest Point. — If in Jesus the union of the 
self-consciousness with the consciousness of God has been 
real, and expressed not only in words, but actually revealed in 
all the conditions of his life, he represents within the religious 
sphere the highest point, beyond whom posterity cannot go ; 
yea, whom it cannot even equal, inasmuch as every one who 
hereafter should climb the same height, could only do it with 
the help of Jesus, who first attained it. As little as humanity 
will ever be without religion, as little will it ever be without 
Christ ; for to have religion without Christ would be as absurd 
as to enjoy poetry without regard to Homer or Shakspeare. 
And this Christ, as far as he is inseparable from the highest 
style of religion, is historical , not mythical ; is an individual, 
no mere symbol. To the historical person of Christ belongs 
all in his life that exhibits his religious perfection, his dis- 
courses, his moral action and his passion. * * * * 

He remains the highest model of religion within the reach of 
thought; and no perfect piety is possible without his presence 
in the heart. — Strauss’ Essay on Christ, p. 47. 

What Must he Remembered in Estimating His Character.— In esti- 
mating the character of Jesus, it must be remembered that he 
died at an age when man has not reached his fullest vigor. 
The great works of creative intellect, the maturest products of 
man, all the deep and settled plans of reforming the world, 
come from a period when experience gives a wider field as the 
basis of hope. Socrates was but an embryo sage till long after 
the age of Jesus; poems and philosophies that live, come at a 
later date. Now, here we see a young man, but little more 
than thirty years old, with no advantage of position ; the son 
and companion of rude people; born in a town whose inhab- 
itants were wicked to a proverb ; of a nation, above all others 
distinguished for their superstition, for national pride, exalta- 
tion of themselves, and contempt for all others ; in an age of 
singular corruption, when the substance of religion had faded 
out from the mind of its anointed ministers, and sin had spread 
wide among a people turbulent, oppressed and down-trodden. 


524 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


A man ridiculed for his lack of knowledge, in this nation of 
forms, of hypocritical priests, and corrupt people, falls back on 
simple morality, simple religion ; unites in himself the sublim- 
est precepts and divinest practices, thus more than realizing 
the dream of prophets and sages; rises free from all prejudice 
of his age, nation, or sect; gives free range to the Spirit of 
God in his breast; sets aside the law, sacred and time-honored 
as it was, its forms, its sacrifices, its temple, and its priests ; 
puts away the doctors of the law, subtle, learned, irrefragable, 
and pours out a doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as 
heaven and true as God. 

Try him as we try other teachers. They deliver their word ; 
find a few waiting for the consolation, who accept the new 
tidings, follow the new method, and soon go beyond their 
teacher, though less mighty minds than he. Such is the case 
with each founder of a school of philosophy — each sect in 
religion. Though humble men, we see what Socrates and 
Luther never saw. But eighteen centuries have passed since 
the tide of humanity rose so high as Jesus ; what man, what 
sect, what church, has mastered his thought, comprehended his 
method, and so fully applied it to life ? Let the world answer 
in its cry of anguish . — Theodore Parker: Discourse of Religion , 
pp. 278-87. 

What the Life of Christ Presented. — The life of Christ presented 
a realized ideal of human culture such as man’s nature can never 
attain unto, let his development reach what point it may. He 
described the future effects of the truth which he revealed in 
a way that no man could comprehend at the time, and which 
centuries of history have only been contributing to illustrate. 
Nor was the progress of the future more clear to his vision 
than the steps in the history of the past, as is shown by his 
own statements of the relation which he sustained to the old 
dispensation. Facts which it required the course of ages to 
make clear, lay open to his eye; and history has both explained 
and verified the laws which he pointed out for the progress of 
his kingdom. He could not, therefore, have held the same 
relation to the plan for whose accomplishment his labors were 
directed, as men who were mere instruments of God, however 
great. He resembled them, it is true, in the fact that his labors 
were ordered according to no plan of human contrivance, but 
to one laid down by God for the development of humanity ; 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


525 


but he differed from them in this, that he understood the full 
compass of God’s plan, and had freely made it his own; that 
it was the plan of his own mind, clearly standing forth in his 
consciousness when he commenced his labors. — Neander’s Life 
of Christ , p. 80. 

Purest and Mightiest. — He is the purest among the mighty, 
the mightiest among the pure, who with his pierced hand has 
raised empires from their foundations, turned the stream of 
history from its old channel, and still continues to rule and 
guide the ages. — Richter. 

Deity Embodied. — It was before Deity embodied in a human 
form, walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, lean- 
ing on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, slumbering in 
the manger, bleeding on the cross— that the prejudices of the 
Synagogue, and the doubts of the Academy, and the pride of 
the Portico, and the fasces of the Lictor, and the swords of 
thirty legions, were humbled in the dust. — Macauley’s Milton. 

Carlyle’s Utterance. — He walked in Judea eighteen hundred 
years ago ; his sphere-melody, flowing in wild nc.tive tones, took 
captive the ravished souls of men, and being of a truth-sphere 
melody, still flows and sounds, though now with thousandfold 
accompaniments and rich symphonies, through all our hearts, 
and modulates and divinely leads them. — Carlyle. 

Addison. — But silence never shows itself to so great an advan- 
tage as when it is made the reply to calumny and defamation, 
provided that we give no just occasion for them. We might 
produce an example of it in the behavior of One, in whom it 
appeared in all its majesty, and one whose silence, as well as 
his person, was altogether divine. — Addison : Tattler , No. 133. 

Burke. — You have the representatives of that religion which 
says that their God is love, that the very vital spirit of their 
religion is Charity — a religion which so much hates oppression 
that, when the God whom we adore appeared in human form, 
He did not appear in a form of greatness and majesty, but in 
sympathy with the lowest of the people, and thereby made it 
a firm and ruling principle that their welfare was the object of 
all government, since the Person who was the Master of Nature 
chose to appear himself in a subordinate situation.— Burlce : 
Impeachment of Warren Eastings. 


526 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


Steele. — The Christian world has a leader, the contemplation 
of whose life and sufferings must administer comfort in 
affliction, while the sense of His power and omnipotence 
must give them humiliation and prosperity. — Sir B. Steele : 
Spectator , No. 356. 

Goethe. — “ Goethe, the most universal and finished, but at the 
same time the most worldly and self-sufficient of all modern 
poets, calls Christ ‘the Divine Man, ? ‘The Holy One,’ and 
represents Him as the pattern and model of humanity.” — 
Schaff's Person of Christ, p. 107. 

Cobbe. — One thing, however, we may hold, with approximate 
certainty ; and that is, that all the highest doctrines, the purest 
moral precepts, the most profound spiritual revelations re- 
corded in the Gospels, were actually those of Christ Himself. 
The originator of the Christian movement must have been the 
greatest soul of His time, as of all time. If He did not 
speak those words of wisdom, who could have recorded 
them for Him ? “It would have taken a Jesus to forge a 
Jesus.” — Frances Power Cobbe. 

Pccaut. — In what great brilliancy and wonderful magnificence 
he appears to the eye of the spirit which is open to wisdom ! 
To shine forth in all his princely splendor of his holiness it 
was not necessary that he should appear as a king, and yet he 
came with all the splendor of his standing. He was the master 
of all 3 because he is really their brother. His moral life is 
wholly penetrated by God. He represents virtue to me under 
the form of love and obedience. On our part, we do more than 
esteem Him ; we offer Him love. — F. Pecaut : Christ and 
Conscience, pp. 245-7. 

Josephus. — About this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if it be 
proper to call Him a man ; for He was a doer of wonderful 
works — a teacher of such men as receive the truth with 
pleasure. He drew over to Him both many of the Jews and 
many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when Pilate, 
at the instigation of the principal men among us, had con- 
demned Him to the cross, those who had loved Him at first did 
not forsake Him. For He appeared to them alive again on the 
third day ; the divine prophets having foretold these and many 
other wonderful things concerning Him. And the sect of 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


527 


Christians, so named after Him, is not extinct to this day.* — 
Josephus : Antiquities, Booh 18, Chapter 3. 

An Oracle. — The oracle declared Christ to be a most pious 
man, and His soul like the soul of other pious men after death, 
favored with immortality, and that the mistaken Christians 
worshiped Him. And when we asked, Why, then, was He 
condemned? the goddess Hecate answered in the oracle: 
The body, indeed, is ever liable to debilitating torments ; but 
the soul of the pious dwells in the heavenly mansion. But 
that soul has fatally been the occasion to many other souls to 
be involved in error, to whom it has not been given to 
acknowledge the immortal Jove. But Himself is pious, and 
gone to heaven as other pious men do. Him, therefore, thou 
shalt not blaspheme; but pity the folly of men, because of the 
danger they are in. — Porphyry : Philosophy of Oracles, A . D. 
304. 

Julian. — Jesus having persuaded a few among you (Galileans, 
as he contemptuously called the Christians) and those of the 
worst of men, has now been celebrated about three hundred 
years ; having done nothing in His lifetime worthy of fame, 
unless any one thinks it a very great work to heal lame and 
blind people and exorcise demoniacs in the villages of Beth- 
saida and Bethany. — Julian : A. D . 361. Prom Cyrillus Alex. 
Contra Julian : Booh VI, p. 191. 

Tacitus. — In order, therefore, to put a stop to the report he 
(Nero) laid the guilt, and inflicted the severest punishments, 
upon a set of people who were holden in abhorrence for their 
crimes, and called by the vulgar Christians. The founder of 
that name was Christ, who suffered death in the reign of 
Tiberius, under his procurator, Pontius Pilate. This per- 
nicious superstition, thus checked for awhile, broke out 
again; and spread not only over Judea, where the evil 
originated, but through Eome also. — Tacitus’ Annals , XV, 
Sect . 44. 

Pliny. — They declared that the whole of their guilt, or their 
error, was, that they were accustomed to meet on a stated day 
before it was light, and to sing in concert a hymn of praise to 

*1 agree with Burton and Paley, that there is no sufficient reason for 
the suspicions which have attached to this passage of Josephus. — 
Bawlinson's Evidences , p. 388. 


528 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


Christ, as God, and to bind themselves by an oath, not for the 
perpetration of any wickedness, but that they would not com- 
mit any theft, robbery, or adultery, nor violate their word, nor 
refuse, when called upon, to restore anything committed to 
their trust. After this they were accustomed to separate, and 
then to reassemble to eat in common a harmless meal. I 
thought, therefore, that they ought to be discharged . — Pliny to 
Trojan : Epistles, X , 97. 

[Let the reader note that the above ancient witnesses either 
expressly or tacitly admit the truth of the evangelical history, 
although of course they distort it by additions or subtractions. — 
Ed.] 

Plato’s Prophecy.— One of the wisest of the heathen (Socrates) 
acknowledged that he could attain to no certainty respecting 
religious truth or moral duty, in these memorable words: “We 
must of necessity wait, till some one from Him who eareth for 
us, shall come and instruct us how we ought to behave toward 
God and toward man.” He further says, “We cannot know of 
ourselves what petition will be pleasing to God, or what wor- 
ship we should pay to him ; but it is necessary that a law-giver 
should be sent from heaven to instruct us.” Still further on, 
he says : “This law-giver must be more than man, that he may 
teach us the things man cannot know by his own nature.” — 
Plato: Republic, Boolcs IV and VI; also , Alcibiades, II, 

The Paucity of Jesus’ Preparations.— He whom Christians rec- 
ognize as the Redeemer of the world was only a youth. 
Whether his religion be regarded as a system of doctrines, 
or as a body of laws, or as a source of extraordinary influ- 
ence, it is passing strange that he should have died in early 
life. His brief period of existence afforded no opportunity 
for maturing anything. In point of fact, while he lived he 
did very little, in the common sense of doing. He originated 
no series of well-concerted plans, he neither contrived nor 
put in motion any extended machinery, he entered into no 
correspondence with parties in his own country and in other 
regions of the world, in order to spread his influence and 
obtain co-operation. Even the few who were his constant 
companions, and were warmly attached to his person, were 
not, in his lifetime, imbued with his sentiments, and were not 
prepared to take up his work in his spirit after he was gone. 
He constituted no society with its name, design and laws 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


529 


all definitely fixed and formally established. He had no time 
to construct and organize. His life was too short, and almost 
all that he did was to speak. He spoke in familiar conversa- 
tion with his friends, or at the wayside to passers-by, or to 
those who chose to consult him, or to large assemblies as 
opportunity afforded. He left behind him a few spoken truths 
— not a line or word of writing — and a certain spirit incar- 
nated in his principles and breathed out from his life, and then 
he died . — John Young : Christ of History , p. 46. 

What Merely a Great Man Would Have Done.— Jesus Christ our 
Lord was, in the true and very highest sense of the term, a social 
reformer; yet He fully proclaimed the whole of His social plan 
before He began to realize it. Had he been merely a “ great 
man,” He would have been more prudent. He would have con- 
ditioned His design; He would have tested it; He would have 
developed it gradually ; He would have made trial of its work- 
ing power ; and then He would have re-fashioned, or contracted, 
or expanded it, before finally proposing it to the consideration 
of the world. But His actual course must have seemed one of 
utter and reckless folly, unless the event had shown it to be 
the dictate of a more than human wisdom. He speaks as One 
who is sure of the compactness and faultlessness of His design ; 
He is certain that no human obstacle can balk its realization. 
He produces it simply without effort, without reserve, without 
exaggeration ; He is calm, because He is in the possession of 
the futiire, and sees His way clearly through its tangled maze. 
There is no proof, no distant intimation of a change or of a 
modification of His plan.— H. P. Liddon : Divinity of Our Lord , 
p. 114. 

His Legislation.— To those who lack faith Christ will not be 
Legislator or King. He does not, indeed, dismiss them, but 
he suffers them to abandon a society which soon ceases to have 
any attraction for them. Such, then, is the new test, and it 
will be found the only one which could answer Christ’s purpose 
of excluding all hollow disciples and including all, however rude 
and vicious, who were capable of better things. Every other 
good quality which we may wish to make the test of a man 
implies either too little or too much for this purpose. 

Justice is often but a form of pedantry, mercy mere easiness 
of temper, courage a mere firmness of physical constitution; 
but if these virtues are genuine, then they indicate not good- 
Hl 


530 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


ness merely, but goodness considerably developed. A man 
may be potentially just or merciful, yet from defect of training 
be may be actually neither. We want a test which shall admit 
all who have it in them to be good, whether their good qualities 
be trained or no. Such a test is found in faith. He who, when 
goodness is impressively put before him, exhibits an instinctive 
loyalty to it, such a man has faith, and the root of the matter is 
in such a man. He may have habits of vice, but the loyal and 
faithful instinct in him will place him above many that practice 
virtue. He may be rude in thought and character, but he will 
unconsciously gravitate towards what is right. Other virtues 
can s carcely thrive without a fine natural organization and a 
happy training. But the most neglected and un gifted of men 
may make a beginning with faith. Other virtues want civiliza- 
tion, a certain amount of knowledge, a few books ; but in half- 
brutal countenances faith will light up a glimmer of nobleness. 
The savage, who can do little else, can wonder and worship 
and enthusiastically obey. He who cannot know what is right 
can know that some one else knows, he who has no law may 
still have a master, he who is incapable of justice may be capa- 
ble of fidelity, he who understands little may have his sins for- 
given because he loves much. — Prof . Seeley : Ecce Homo , 
pp. 75-6. 

No Caterer to the Rich. — Suppose that the Messiah had pre- 
sented himself in the condition anticipated by the Jews; sur- 
rounded by the pomp and parade of a powerful temporal 
prince; sustaining the earthly dignity and splendor of the 
ancient monarchs of the dynasty of David. Now, had such a 
Messiah appeared in Judea, it is perfectly certain, from the 
character of human nature, that his earthly circumstances would 
have a tendency to cherish in the people, as a nation, and as 
individuals, the bad principles of pride and ambition. Worldly 
pomp and circumstance would have had the sanction of the 
highest authority in the person of the Messiah; and it would 
have induced the desire in all hearts to elevate themselves as 
nearly as possible to his temporal condition. The pride of the 
human heart would have been fostered and not humbled. 
Instead of causing the middle walks of life to be grateful and 
contented in their condition, it would have produced in them 
an anxiety to stretch themselves upward. * * * * And 
instead of causing the poor to feel a greater degree of content- 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


531 


ment, and to avoid repining at their lot, the circumstances of 
the Messiah would have deepened their dejection. — J, B . 
Walker: Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation, p. 137. 

Choose Ye. — If Jesus is the Mediator, full of grace and truth,, 
having the word of pardon, ever ready with His miraculous 
assistance, justifying us by His cross and His glorious resur- 
rection and the sacred influences of the Holy Spirit — if He is 
God’s only begotten Son, then, my brethren, give Him your 
hands and your hearts, and follow after Him as your Lord, 
your Shepherd, and your Savior. 

But if Jesus be only the carpenter’s son, full of all kinds of 
frenzy and self-glorification, making dismal assertions and 
blasphemous pretensions; and, as His final fate, well deserving 
to be crucified, then turn your backs upon Him, the sooner 
the better, and regret nothing so much as that you abided with 
Him so long. u The old faith or the new ? ” Decide for your- 
selves. 

If the Holy Scriptures are God’s word then submit to it, 
body and soul. Upon this rock you must build your houses as 
against storms and tempests ; upon this rock you must build 
your churches as against the gates of hell. If, however, it be 
nothing more than a book full of superstition and chimerical 
fancies, or fantastical delusions or antiquated notions, then 
prohibit its entrance into your houses and schools . — Rudolph 
Kogel: The Complete Preacher , Tune, 1877. 

The Effect of miracles on Hen in Christ’s Day.— In one aspect, 
indeed, these miraculous cures furthered the great purpose 
of Jesus. They might prove no doctrine, for mere power could 
not establish moral and spiritual truth. Miracles might possi- 
bly be wrought by other influences than divine, and left 
religious teaching to stand on its own merits, for they appealed 
to the senses ; not, like truth, to the soul. The display or 
overwhelming power might almost seem to endanger, rather 
than promote the higher aim of Jesus, to win those whom he 
addressed. It awes and repels men to find themselves in the 
presence of forces which they can neither resist nor under- 
stand. In nature, untutored races tremble before powers 
which may be used to destroy them, and seek to win their 
favor by the flattery of worship, surrounding even human 
despotism with awful attributes, before which they cower in 
terror. 


532 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


His Miracles as Evidences. — Jesus, however, could appeal to 
His miraculous powers as evidences of His divine mission, and 
often did so. Their value lay in the grandeur they added to 
His character. Even in the wilderness, He had refused to 
exert them, under any circumstances, either for His natural 
wants, or for His personal ends, and He adhered to this amazing 
self-restraint through His whole career. It was seen from the 
first, that His awful powers were uniformly beneficent ; that 
He came, not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them ; that He 
used omnipotence to bless, but never to hurt. His words, His 
bearing, and His looks of divine love and tenderness, doubt- 
less predisposed man to expect this, and His uniform course 
soon confirmed it. They saw nothing that could disturb His 
absolute patience, or rouse Him to vindictiveness. They 
heard Him endure meekly the most contemptuous sneers, the 
bitterest criticism, and the most rancorous hostility. No one 
denied His miraculous powers, though some affected to call them 
demoniac, in direct contradiction to their habitual exercise for 
the holiest ends. But they were so invariably devoted to the 
good of others, and so entirely held under restraint, as regarded 
personal ends, that men came erelong to treat Him with the 
reckless boldness of hatred, notwithstanding such awful 
endowment. 

Self-Interest No Place in Him. — Bound one so transcendently 
meek, self-interest found no motive for gathering. He who 
would do nothing with such possibilities, for Himself, could 
not be expected to do more for the personal ends of others. 
Hypocrisy had nothing to gain by seeking His favor. Only 
sincerity found Him attractive. But, on the other hand, with 
the uncorrupted and worthy, this characteristic gave Him 
unlimited moral elevation. No more sublime spectacle can be 
conceived than boundless power, kept in perfect control, for 
ends wholly unselfish and noble. Condescension wins admira- 
tion when it is only from man to man ; when it showed itself in 
veiled omnipotence, ever ready to bless others, but never used 
on its own behalf, it became a divine ideal . — Cunningham 
Geikie : The Life of Christ , p. 387. 

Christianity More Than Definitions and Propositions.— The love 
of Christ was ultimately strangled by the growth of opinion. 
The faith of the Apostolic age — originally trust in a living, 
present, energetic power, which was able to save to the utter- 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


533 


most all who came to God through Him — became the acceptance 
of a series of abstract propositions, not one of which touched 
the heart or strengthened the* will. But Christianity is always 
compelled to seek for its sanctions in something more impul- 
sive than a series of definitions ; perpetually revives itself by 
tearing to pieces, or breaking through the cobwebs of a subtle 
logic ; and always puts before the believer’s mind a personal 
Christ, a perfect Man, a Being to love, to live for, to labor for, 
to die for, to hope in. The humanity of Christ makes martyrs ; 
disputes about the nature of His divinity have bred school- 
men and inquisitors . — Paul of Tarsus : A Graduate, p. 307. 

How to Get Rid of Unclean Things. — Put Christ in your temple, 
and whatever ought not to be there will depart at his bidding. 
Is your congregation disturbed by the presence of beasts and 
birds that defile it! Open the door to Him, and give Him full 
possession, for He alone has the power to drive them out. Is 
the temple of your heart infested with the beasts of selfishness, 
which show their presence in the works of the flesh? You 
cannot expel them by your will alone. Put Christ in your 
temple. 

There are yet those who are vainly trying to cleanse the 
temple of its falsehood by a scourge of small cords of doctrine 
spun out of their own brain. There are those who are seeking 
to expel from churches organs, festivals, etc., by the force of 
their own personal menaces ; and there are not wanting those 
who are seeking to cleanse their own lives by their low keeping 
in their own strength. Put Christ in your temples, and what- 
ever ought not to be there He will drive out . — Alexander 
Procter. 

The Manliness of Jesus.— The man whose yea is yea and his 
nay nay, is, we all confess, the most courageous, whether or no 
he may be most successful in daily life. And he who gave the 
precept has left us the most perfect example of how to live up 
to it. And this quality, you will find, shines out at once 
in these early conversations with Nathaniel, Nicodemus, 
and the woman of Samaria, as much as in the discourses of his 
later years. 

Before considering them, we may glance at the purification of. 
the temple, an act which, at any rate, should satisfy those who 
think courage best proved by physical daring. At this time, 
we must remember, he had no following, such as the crowd 


534 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


that swept after him on Palm Sunday, three years later, into 
the temple courts. But, leaving the act to speak for itself, 
look at the rare courage of the speech by which that act is 
justified when it is challenged. He, not even a Levite, a mere 
peasant from a despised province, had presumed to exercise 
authority in the very temple precincts. Jerusalem was full of 
worse idolatries, but the idolatry of the temple buildings was, 
perhaps, the strongest. The Jews seem to have regarded them 
as Christians have sometimes regarded the visible Church, or 
the Bible — as an object of worship ; to have thought that if 
they perished, God himself would perish. And so Christ’s 
answer goes straight to the root of their idolatry. His words 
were not understood by the crowd, or even by his own disci- 
ples, in their full meaning — that his body, and the body of 
every man, is the true temple of God. But they understood 
enough of them to see that he had no superstition about 
these splendid buildings of theirs, and was trying to lift them 
above local and national prejudices, and those who would not 
be lifted brooded over them till their day of vengeance came. 

But there were those on whom the daring acts and words of 
Christ were already taking hold. Many of those who had come 
up to the Passover believed in him, some even amongst the 
rulers. One of these we hear more of at once. 

Nicodemus With Jesus. — Nicodemus, we must remember, was a 
leading member of the Sanhedrim, a representative of that 
section of the rulers who, like the rest of the nation, were 
expecting a deliverer, a king who should prevail against the 
Caesar. They had sent to the Baptist, and had heard of his 
testimony to this young Galilean, who had now come to Jeru- 
salem, and was showing signs of a power which they could not 
but acknowledge. For had he not cleansed the temple, which 
they had never been able to do, but, notwithstanding their 
pretended reverence for it, had allowed to be turned into a 
shambles and an exchange ? They saw that a part of the people 
were ready to gather to him, but that he had refused to com- 
mit himself to them. This, then, the best of them must have 
felt, was no mere leader of a low, fierce, popular party or fac- 
tion. Mcodemus a*t any rate was evidently inclined to doubt 
whether he might not prove to be the king they were looking 
for, as the Baptist had declared. The doubt must be solved, 
and he would see for himself. 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


535 


And so 'he comes to Christ, and hears directly from him, 
that he has indeed come to set up a kingdom, but that it is no 
visible kingdom like the Caesar’s, but a kingdom over men’s 
spirits, one which rulers as well as peasants must become new 
men before they can enter— that a light has come into the 
world, and “ he that doeth truth cometh to that light.” 

From beginning to end there is no word to catch this ruler, 
or those he represented; no balancing of phrases or playing 
with plausible religious shibboleths, with which Nicodemus 
would be familiar, and which might please, and, perchance, 
reconcile, this well-disposed ruler and the powerful persons he 
represented. There is, depend upon it, no severer test of man- 
liness than our behavior to powerful persons, whose aid would 
advance the cause we have at heart. We know from the later 
records that the interview of that night, and the strange words 
he had heard at it, made a deep impression on this ruler. His 
manliness, however, breaks down for the present. He shrinks 
back and disappears, leaving the strange young peasant to go 
on his way. 

The same splendid directness and incisiveness characterize 
his teaching at Samaria. There, again, he attacks at once the 
most cherished local traditions, showing that the place of 
worship matters nothing, the object of worship everything. 
That object is a father of men’s spirits, who wills that all men 
shall know and worship him, but who can only be worshiped 
in spirit and in truth. He, the peasant, who is talking to them, 
is himself the Messiah, who has come from this Father of 
them and him, to give them this spirit of truth in their own 
hearts. 

The Jews at Jerusalem had been clamoring round him for 
signs of his claim to speak such words, and in the next 
few days his own people would be crying out for his blood 
when they heard them. These Samaritans make no such demand, 
but hear and recognize the message and the messenger. The 
seed is sown, and he passes on never to return and garner the 
harvest ; deliberately preferring the hard, priest-ridden lake 
cities of the Jews as the centre of his ministry. He will leave 
ripe fields for others to reap. This decision, interpret 
it as we will, is that of no soft or timid reformer. Take this 
test again and compare Christ’s choice of his first field for work 
with that of any other great leader of men. 


536 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


Reasons for Speaking Soft Things.— This first period fitly closes 
with the scene at Nazareth. Here he returns, while the reports 
of his doings at the feast at Jerusalem are fresh in the minds 
of his family and fellow-townsmen. They are excited and 
divided as to him and his doings. A thousand reasons would 
occur for speaking soft things, at such a moment, for accom- 
modating his teaching, here at any rate, to the wants and tastes 
of his hearers, so as to keep a safe and friendly asylum at Naza- 
reth, amongst the scenes and people he had loved from child- 
hood. It is clear that some of his family, if not his mother 
herself, were already seriously alarmed and displeased. They 
disliked what they had heard of his teaching at Jerusalem and on 
his way home, which they felt must bring him to ruin, in which 
they might be involved. He must have seen and conversed 
with them in his own home before that scene in the synagogue, 
and have had then to endure the bitter pain of alienating those 
whom he loved and respected, and had reason to love and 
respect, but who could not for the time rise out of the conven- 
tional, respectable way of looking at things. 

To stand by what our conscience witnesses for as truth, 
through evil and good report, even against all opposition of 
those we love, and of those whose judgment we look up to and 
should ordinarily prefer to follow ; to cut ourselves deliberately 
off from their love and sympathy and respect, is surely, I repeat, 
one of the most severe trials to which we can be put. A man 
has need to feel at such times that the Spirit of the Lord is 
upon him in some measure, as it was upon Christ when he rose 
in the synagogue of Nazareth, and, selecting the passage of 
Isaiah which speaks most directly of the Messiah, claimed that 
title for himself, and told them that to-day this prophecy was 
fulfilled in him. 

The fierce, hard, J ewish spirit is at once roused to fury. They 
would kill him then and there, and so settle his claims, once for 
all. He passes through them, and away from the quiet home 
where he had been brought up— alone, it would seem, so far as 
man could make him so, and homeless for the remainder of his 
life. Yet not alone, for his Father is with him ; nor homeless, 
for he has the only home of which man can be sure, the home 
of his own heart, shared with the Spirit of God .— Thomas 
Hughes: Manliness of Christ , Chap. 5th. 

How He Won All; — To win all, He moved as a man among men, 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


537 


a friend among friends, a helper amongst all who needed help, 
declining every outward honor or flattery, or even the appear- 
ance of either. While advancing the most amazing preten- 
sions as His Kingly prerogative, He was, personally, so meek 
and lowly that He could make this gentle humility a ground 
for the trust and unembarrassed approach of all who were 
troubled. Content with obscurity, and leaving to others the 
struggle for distinction or place, He chose a life so humble 
that the poorest had no awe of His dignity, but gathered round 
Him as their special friend. His tastes were in keeping with 
this simplicity, for He delighted in the society of the lowly, 
and children clustered in His steps with the natural instinct 
that detects one who loves them. He was never engrossed by 
His own affairs, but ever ready to give himself up to those of 
others — to counsel them in difficulties, to sympathize with them 
in their sorrows or joys, and to relieve their sickness or 
wants. It is His grand peculiarity, that there is a total oblivion 
of self in His whole life. The enthusiasm of a divine love, in 
the pure light of which no selfish thought could live, filled His 
whole soul. He showed abiding sympathy for human weak- 
ness, and to cheer the outcast and hopeless, He announced 
that He came to seek such as to others seemed lost. In His 
joy over a sinner won back to righteousness He hears even 
the angels of God rejoicing. 

There had never appeared in any age such a man, such a 
friend, such a helper. He seemed the contrast of a king or 
prince, and yet all His words were kingly; all His acts a suc- 
cession of the kingliest deeds, decisions, and commands, and 
His whole public life, the silent, and yet truest foundation of 
an everlasting kingdom. He must, indeed, have seemed any- 
thing rather than the founder of a new society, or of a new 
empire, and it must have startled men when they found that 
He had, by His works, and life, established in the midst of the 
old theocracy, the framework of the most imperishable and the 
widest-reaching empire this earth has ever seen ; an empire 
before which all former religious systems were to fade away. — 
Cunningham Geilcie : Life of Christ, pp. 410-11. 

One of the Glories of the Incarnation.— Here appears one of the 
glories of the Incarnation, lost sight of in -the common view, 
viz : that it is a revelation, not only of the true God, but of the 
true man. Humanity, in its true idea, as well as Deity, was 


538 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


lost out of the consciousness of the race, and needed to be 
restored ; and both are restored and revealed in Jesus Christ. 
The dependence of Christ on the Father is based on, and is a 
revelation of, the great truth that man is incomplete without 
God. The true idea of man is not a self-existent, or self-depen- 
dent, or self-righteous, or self-knowing being, but a receptivity 
and organ for the Divine ; made to be inspired, led by, and 
filled with the spirit of God. Man lives only (spiritually) as 
the spirit and life of God lives within him. He loves only as 
the love of God is shed abroad in his soul. He knows in the 
highest sense only as the light of God shines within him, and 
the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding. The 
Word made flesh verifies this truth in his own experience. 
The Son, being human, and nofc merely united to or clothed 
with humanity, is dependent on the Father, lives by the Father, 
prays to and receives from the Father, according to this true 
idea and law of humanity. 

The same view explains the temptation and suffering of Christ 
as no other theory can. God, as God, the Absolute and Infinite 
one, cannot be tempted of evil, neither can He suffer from it. 
But God as Man — the Word made flesh, and subjected to the 
fleshly conditions and limitations of humanity — can do both. 

Christ’s Temptation. — When it is declared that Christ was 
tempted in all things like as we are, yet without sin, it is very 
easy for logic to argue that since God cannot be tempted with 
evil, therefore this is an experience of the human soul of 
Christ, and proves a human soul distinct from the divine. But 
this explains neither the fact nor the import of the Savior’s 
temptation. The fact revealed is not that a certain man, Jesus, 
was tempted, but that a Divine Being, the Word made flesh, 
came under these human conditions. And the divine signifi- 
cance of this fact is that God claims no exemption from the 
law of duty on the score of His Omnipotence and divine 
immunity from evil. The temptation of Christ shows the 
identity of the divine and human virtue, or that God requires 
no more of man in the way of obedience and resistance to evil 
than He is willing to do and encounter Himself. — H. M. Good- 
win : Christ and Humanity, pp. 28-9. 

Jesus Tempted to Convert Stones Into Bread.— Our Lord answered 
“ It standeth written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by 
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” And 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


539 


what a lesson lies herein before us — a lesson enforced by how 
great an example — that we are not to be guided by the wants 
of our lower nature ; that we may not misuse that lower nature 
for the purposes of our own sustenance and enjoyment; that 
we are not our own, and may not do what we will with that 
which we imagine to be our own ; that even those things which 
may seem lawful, are yet not all expedient; that man has higher 
principles of life than material sustenance, as he is a higher 
existence than his material frame. He who thinks that we 
live by bread alone will make the securing of bread the chief 
object of his life — will determine to have it at whatever cost — 
will be at once miserable and rebellious if even for a time he 
be stinted or deprived of it, and, because he seeks no diviner 
food, will inevitably starve with hunger in the midst of it. — 
F. W. Farrar : Life of Christ, p. 60. 

Jesus Foresees His Work. — Mapped out before his foreseeing 
eye in all its times, places, events, issues, lay the whole of his 
earthly life and ministry. The perfect unbroken unity of design 
and action running throughout the whole proclaims a previous 
foresight, a premeditated, well-ordered plan. It has not been 
so with any of those men who have played the greatest and 
most prominent parts on the stage of human history. Their 
own confessions, the story of their lives, their earlier compared 
with their later acts, all tell us how little they knew or thought 
beforehand of what they finally were to be and do. Instead of 
one fixed, uniform, unchanging scheme and purpose running 
through and regulating the whole life, in all its lesser as well 
as its greater movements, there have been shiftings and chang- 
ings of place to suit the shiftings and changings of cir- 
cumstances. Surprisals here, disappointments there; old in- 
struments of action worn out and thrown away, new ones 
invented and employed ; the life made up of a motley array of 
many-colored incidents, out of which have come issues never 
dreamed of in the beginning. Was it so with the life that Jesus 
lived on earth ? Had he been a mere man, committing himself 
to a great work under the guidance of a sublime, yet purely 
human, and therefore weak and blind impulse, had he seen only 
so far into the future as the unaided human eye could carry, 
how much was there in the earlier period of his ministry to 
have excited false hopes, how much in the latter to have pro- 
duced despondency ! But the people came in multitudes around 


540 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


him, and you can trace no sign of extravagant expectation. The 
tide of popular favor ebbs away from him, and you see no token 
of his giving up his enterprise in despair. No wavering of pur- 
pose, no change of plan, no altering of his course, to suit new 
and obviously unforeseen emergencies. There is progress ; a 
steady advance onward to the final consummation of the cross 
and the burial, the resurrection and the ascension; but all is 
consistent, all is harmonious. — Dr. Hanna : Life of Christ , 
p. 114. 

What He Wight Have Been. — The cause of man was the cause 
of Christ. He did no hireling’s work. The only pay He got 
was hatred, a crown of thorns and the cross. He might have 
escaped it all. He might have been the Leader of the people 
and their King. He might have converted the idolatry of an 
hour into the hosannas of a lifetime. If He would but have 
conciliated the Pharisees, instead of bidding them defiance, 
and exasperating their bigotry against Him ; if He would have 
but explained, and, like some demagogue called to account, 
trimmed away His sublime sharp-edged truths about oppression 
and injustice until they became harmless, because meaningless ; 
if He would but have left unsaid those rough things about the 
consecrated Temple and the Sabbath-days ; if He would but 
have left undisputed the hereditary title of Israel to God’s 
favor, and not stung the national vanity by telling them that 
trust in God justifies the Gentile as entirely as the Jew; if 
He would but have taught less prominently that hateful 
doctrine of the salvability of the heathen Gentiles and the 
heretic Samaritans, and the universal Fatherhood of God ; if 
He would but have stated with less angularity of edge His 
central truth that not by mere compliance with law, but by a 
spirit transcending law, even the spirit of the cross and self- 
sacrifice, can the soul of man be atoned to God; — that would 
have saved Him. But that would have been the desertion of 
the cause — God’s cause and man’s cause, the cause of the 
ignorant, defenceless sheep, whose very salvation depended on 
the keeping of that Gospel intact; therefore, the Shepherd gave 
His life a Witness to the Truth, and a sacrifice to God. It was 
a profound truth that the populace gave utterance to, when 
they taunted Him on the cross : u He saved others, Himself 
He cannot save.” No ! of course not; He that will save others 
cannot save Himself. — F. W. Robertson: Vol. 2d, pp. 301-2. 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


541 


Why Jesus Fasted* — Do you ask now, For what reason was 
J esus obliged to fast and why in such dreary solitude, and why 
was his abstinence so painful, and protracted through forty 
days and forty nights ? Know, then, in the first place, that the 
fasting of Jesus was of a different nature from that of Moses, 
for instance, on the Mount, and of other saints. The fasting of 
our Lord was more than a mere spiritual exercise, or prepara- 
tion for his priesthood; it was an actual sacrifice, a commence- 
ment of the priestly office. The key not only to His tempta- 
tion, but also to His fasting, we find behind the barred portals 
of the lost paradise. It is atonement for Adam’s sin, payment 
of his debt, expiatory passion. If the first Adam lived in the 
delightful fields of Paradise, we find the second Adam in a 
waste, howling wilderness. If Adam, the man of the earth, 
dwelt amid fragrant bowers, and enjoyed the delicious fruits of 
Eden, the man from heaven is shut up to hunger in a desert, 
surrounded only by stones and unfruitful shrubs, where not one 
blade of corn was to be found to appease the cravings of His 
nature. — Krummacher: The Temptation of Christ. 

Human Form Needed for Revelation of God.— The Divine, if it 
is to reveal itself at all to us, will best reveal itself in our own 
human form. However far the human may be from the Divine, 
nothing on earth is nearer to God than man, nothing on earth 
more godlike than man. And as man grows from childhood 
to old age, the idea of the Divine must grow with us from the 
cradle to the grave, from asrama to asrama, from grace to 
grace. A religion which is not able thus to grow and live with 
us as we grow and live, is dead already. Definite and unvary- 
ing uniformity, so far from being a sign of honesty and life, is 
always a sign of dishonesty and death. Every religion, if it is 
to be a bond of union between the wise and the foolish, the 
old and the young, must be pliant, must be high, and deep, and 
broad: bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all 
things, enduring all things. The more it is so, the greater its 
vitality, the greater the strength and warmth of its embrace. 

It was exactly because the doctrine of Christ, more than 
that of the founders of any other religion, offered in the 
beginning an expression of the highest truths in which Jewish 
carpenters, Roman publicans, and Greek philosophers could 
join without dishonesty, that it has conquered the best part of 
the world. It was because attempts were made from very 


542 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


early times to narrow and stiffen the outward signs and expres- 
sions of our faith, to put narrow dogma in the place of trust 
and love, that the Christian Church has often lost those who 
might have been its best defenders, and that the religion of 
Christ has almost ceased to be what, before all things, it was 
meant to be, a religion of world- wide love and charity. — F. 
Max . Muller: The Origin and Growth of Religion , Hibbert Lee - 
tures, 1878, p. 358. 

Jesus Stills the Raging Moral Sea.— If the gospel of Christ 
presents us with sure, firm principles for estimating the move- 
ments of the present; if it intrusts to us the word that 
solves the riddle of our time; the word which the prudent 
men of the world, the obstrusive physicians of the sick gener- 
ation in vain seek for, is it not natural that a powerful impulse 
should be roused in ardent souls, to rush with a spirit for con- 
test into the midst of the confusion of the time, in order to 
help to end it ? in order to dissipate the delusions of folly and 
passion, and rule with power over the wild waves of discord- 
ant opinions ? And can we blame them for this desire ? It is 
the example of the Lord himself which allures them to it, as it 
did Peter ; for Christ, also did not withdraw Himself from the 
apparently inextricable confusion of His day ; but He entered 
into the raging sea of passionate strife, interfering between 
embittered parties in order that by living, personal intercourse 
with all on every side, He might, through the divine clearness of 
His soul, bring light and order into the dark time and its wild 
movements. — Julius Muller: Christ Walking on the Waves . 

The King of Truth. — From the hands of a magistrate without 
conscience, the man, who called himself King of the truth, fell 
into the hands of a people without reason. He was dragged to 
a hill-top and nailed to a slave’s gibbet. But with a last surviv- 
ing scruple of justice, Pilate wrote above His head His royal 
title : Jesus of Nazareth , King of the Jews . And there He died. 
And there He reigns. And I, in fellowship with all Christians 
complete in faith and knowledge, do worship Him because bear- 
ing witness to the truth. He feared not to make Himself one 
with the truth, saying that wonderful word, “ I am the Truth.” 
I worship Him; but if you have not yet attained to this, you 
may at least admire, recognizing in Him — what is no light thing 
to do, but much graver, perhaps, than you think — the model 
for mankind. Like Him, then, whoever we may be, of what- 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


543 


ever rank or condition, of whatever religious or philosophic 
creed ; if we hold fast our own integrity, if we keep the respect 
of our own conscience, if we maintain the honor due to truth 
and righteousness, it is our right and our duty to say, “ To this 
end was I born, for this cause am I come into the world that I 
should bear witness to the truth .” — Pere Hyacintlie : The Com- 
plete Preacher , October , 1877. 

Christ is Everything. — Christ is everything to the Christian in 
time of trouble. Who has escaped trouble? We must all stoop 
down and drink out of the bitter lake. The moss has no time to 
grow on the buckets that come up out of the heart’s well, drip- 
ping with tears. Great trials are upon our track as certain as 
greyhound pack on the scent of deer. From our hearts in every 
direction there are a thousand chords reaching out binding us to 
loved ones, and ever and anon some of these tendrils snap. The 
winds that cross this sea of life are not all abaft. The clouds 
that cross our sky are not feathery and afar, straying like flocks 
of sheep on heavenly pastures ; but wrathful and sombre, and 
gleaming with terror, they wrap the mountains in fire, and come 
down baying with their thunders through every gorge. The 
richest fruits of blessing have a prickly shell. Life here is not 
lying at anchor ; it is weathering a gale. It is not sleeping in 
a soldier’s tent with our arms stacked ; it is a bayonet-charge. 
We stumble over gravestones, and we drive on with our wheel 
deep in the old rut of graves. Trouble has wrinkled our brow, 
and it has frosted your head. Falling in this battle of life, is 
there no angel of mercy to bind our wounds ? Hath God made 
this world with so many things to hurt and none to heal ? For 
this snake-bite of sorrow, is there no herb growing by all the 
brooks to heal the poison? Blessed be God that in the Gospel 
we find the antidote ! Christ has bottled an ocean of tears. How 
many thorns He hath plucked out of human agony? Oh! He 
knows too well what it is to carry a cross not to help us carry 
ours ! — T. DeWitt Talmage : Vol . 3d, p, 37. 

Christ Leading the Jewish Wind On.— We must enquire what 
effect the Pentecost produced on the old disciples’ conception 
of the Gospel, so far as the relations of the old faith to the 
new are concerned. The endowment of the Spirit has dispelled 
some of the clouds previously hanging about their minds; 
somewhat of the old grossness has been purged away. They 
stand upon the top of a loftier ecstacy. Still, none of them see 


544 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


the final bearings of Christ’s mission. Few, if any, have care- 
fully considered the question, What is the relation of the new 
faith to the old, of the Gospel to the law ? Few, if any, are 
aware that they have taken a step which logically leads to their 
separation from the old communion. They see in Christianity 
“the fulfillment” of the Law, but not its passing away; and it 
has not occurred to them that they are the less Jews because 
they have become disciples of Jesus. The great body of the 
new converts, and perhaps all, share the same feeling. Had 
they understood what conversion to Christ really involved, it 
is impossible to say what would have been their action. It is 
proper to observe that our Lord never put needless difficulties 
in His own way. He never said the forms of the old worship 
would become obsolete at a given time, nor did he ever, either 
before or after His ascension, say, in plain, literal words, that 
the old dispensation had come to an end. He never issued a 
proclamation commanding His followers to abandon the courts 
of the Temple, or to refrain from participation in the ancient 
rites. He u fulfilled ” the law, putting aside its traditional cere - 
monies and worship, by inculcating a few spiritual principles; 
as Mature strips the dead leaves from the trees in the spring- 
time, by sending through their branches currents of fresh, 
vigorous sap —Pres. B. A . Hinsdale : Jewish Christian Church, 
p. 46. 

Teaching of the Scribes Contrasted with that of Jesus.— The 
teaching of the Scribes was narrow, dogmatical, material; it 
was cold in manner, frivolous in matter, second-hand and itera- 
tive in its very essence ; with no freshness in it, no force, no 
fire ; servile to all authority, opposed to all independence ; at 
once erudite and foolish, at once contemptuous and mean . 
never passing a hair’s breadth beyond the carefully-watched 
boundary line of commentary and precedent; full of balanced 
inference, and orthodox hesitancy, and impossible literalism; 
intricate with legal pettiness and labyrinthine system ; eleva- 
ting mere memory above genius, and repetition above orig- 
inality ; concerned only about priests and Pharisees, in temple 
and synagogue, or school, or Sanhedrin, and mostly occupied 
with things infinitely little. * * * * But this 

teaching of Jesus was wholly different in its character, and 
as much grander as the temple of the morning sky under 
which it was uttered was grander than stifling synagogue or 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


545 


crowded school. * * * * And there was no 
reserve in its administration. It flowed forth as sweetly and 
as lavishly to single listeners as to enraptured crowds ; and 
some of its very richest revelations were vouchsafed, neither 
to rulers nor to multitudes, but to the persecuted outcast of 
the Jewish Synagogue, to the timid enquirer in the lonely 
midnight, and the frail woman by the noonday well. 

And it dealt, not with scrupulous tithes and ceremonial 
cleansings, but with the human soul, and human destiny, and 
human life — with Hope and Charity and Faith. There were no 
definitions in it, or explanations, or scholastic systems, or philo- 
sophic theorizing, or implicated mazes of dubious and difficult 
discussion, but a swift, intuitive insight into the very depths of 
the human heart — even a supreme and daring paradox that, 
without being fenced round with exceptions or limitations, 
appealed to the conscience with its irresistible simplicity, and 
with an absolute mastery sfirred and dominated over the heart. 
Springing from the depths of holy emotions, it thrilled the 
being of every listener as with electric flame. In a word, its 
authority was the utterance of the Divine Incarnate. — Farrar: 
Life of Christ , p. 122. 

Jesus’ Prescience. — He does not sit in the seat of Moses, nor 
speak a sacred and learned tongue ; he mixes with the people 
in the towns and country ; the green summit of a hill, the side 
of a well, the market places, the fields where feed the flocks, are 
alike his pulpit and text, and he draws lessons, the most sublime, 
from the commonest concerns of life. With a skillful hand he 
can engraft his teachings on to the dispositions of his hearers ; 
he discerns, at a glance, the point of contact between the 
spirits he seeks to enlighten and his own exalted thoughts. 
No one knows so well as Jesus how to connect new truth with 
the old and familiar. No thought remains in his teaching vague 
and abstract. It is at once clothed in a body, and stands forth 
in bold relief. * * * * He always addresses man 

as man ; he aims at the heart and conscience — that is, at that 
which is deepest and most fundamental in the soul. He never 
addresses the man of a certain class, or a certain culture. He 
passes rapidly by the merely accidental and contingent, all the 
distractions of a day, that which may be called the changing 
vesture of the moral being, to act on the moral being itself. 
He lays his finger directly on the human heart, as it is found in 
il 


546 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


every stage of culture and civilization. Hence the world- wide 
scope of his teaching . — Pressense : Life of Christ, pp. 267-8. 

Extraordinary Elements in Jesus’ Career.— Viewed externally, 
He is a perfectly harmless being, actuated by no destructive 
passions, gentle to inferiors, doing ill or injury to none. The 
figure of a Lamb, which never was, or could be, applied to any 
of the great human characters, without an implication of 
weakness fatal to all respect, is yet, with no such effect, 
applied to him. We associate weakness with innocence, and 
the association is so powerful, that no human writer would 
undertake to sketch a great character on the basis of inno- 
cence, or would even think it possible. We predicate innocence 
of infancy, but to be a perfectly harmless, guileless man, never 
doing ill even for a moment, we consider to be the same as to 
be a man destitute of spirit and manly force. But Christ 
accomplished the impossible. Appearing in all the grandeur 
and majesty of a superhuman manhood, he is able still to unite 
the impression of innocence, with no apparent diminution of 
his sublimity. * * * * Human piety begins with repent- 
ance. It is the effort of a being, implicated in wrong and 
writhing under the stings of guilt, to come unto God. The 
most righteous, or even self-righteous, men blend expressions 
of sorrow, and vows of new obedience with their exercises. 
But Christ, in the character given him, never acknowledges 
sin. It is the grand peculiarity of his piety, that he never re- 
grets anything that he has done or been ; expresses nowhere a 
single feeling of compunction, or the least sense of unworthi- 
ness. ******** 

We could not long endure a human being whose face was 
never moved by laughter, or relaxed by a gladdening smile. 
What sympathy could we have with one who appears, in this 
manner, to have no human heart. We could not even trust 
him. And yet we have sympathy with Christ; for there is 
somewhere in him an ocean of deep joy, and we see that he is, 
in fact, only burdened with his sympathy for us to such a 
degree, that his mighty life is overcast and oppressed by the 
charge he has undertaken. * * * * The more 

closely he is drawn to other worlds the more fresh and 
susceptible is he to the humanities of this. The little child is 
an image of gladness, which his heart leaps forth to embrace. 
The wedding and the feast and the funeral have all their cord 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


547 


of sympathy in his bosom. At the wedding he is clothed in 
congratulation, at the feast in doctrine, at the funeral in tears ; 
but no miser was ever drawn to his money with a stronger 
desire, than he to worlds above the world. Men undertake to 
be spiritual and they become ascetic ; or endeavoring to hold 
a liberal view of the comforts and pleasures of society, they 
are soon buried in the world, and slaves to its fashions ; or 
holding a scrupulous watch to keep out every particular sin, 
they become legal, and fall out of liberty ; or, charmed with the 
noble and heavenly liberty, they run to negligence and 
irresponsible living; so the earnest become violent, the fervent 
fanatical and censorious, the gentle waver, the firm turn bigots, 
the liberal grow lax, the benevolent ostentatious. Poor human 
infirmity can hold nothing steady. Where the pivot of 
righteousness is broken the scales must need slide off their 
balance. * * * * And yet the character of 

Christ is never modified, even by a shade of rectification. It 
is one and the same throughout. He makes no improvements, 
prunes no extravagances, returns from no eccentricities. The 
balance of His character is never disturbed, or readjusted, 
and the astounding assumption on which it is based is 
never shaken, even by a suspicion that he falters in it. 
*######*#### 

Great on Small Occasions Without Impatience.— Great occasions 
rally great principles, and brace the mind to a lofty bearing, a 
bearing that is even above itself. But trials that make no 
occasion at all, leave it to show the goodness and beauty it 
has in its own disposition. And here precisely is the super- 
human glory of Christ as a character, that he is just as perfect, 
exhibits just as great a spirit, in little trials as in great ones. 
In all the history of his life, we are not able to detect the faintest 
indication that he slips or falters. And this is the more remark- 
able that he is prosecuting so great a work, with so great 
enthusiasm; counting it his meat and drink, and pouring into 
it all the energies of his life. For when men have great works 
on hand, their very enthusiasm runs to impatience. When 
thwarted or unreasonably hindered, their soul strikes fire 
against the obstacles they meet, they worry themselves at 
every hindrance, every disappointment, sind break out in 
stormy and fanatical violence. But Jesus, for some reason, 
is just as even, just as serene, in all his petty vexations, and 


548 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


hindrances, as if he had nothing on hand to do. A kind of 
sacred patience invests him everywhere. Having no element 
of crude will mixed with his work, he is able, in all trial and 
opposition, to hold a condition of serenity above the clouds, 
and let them sail under him, without ever obscuring the sun. — 
Horace Bushnell : Nature and Supernatural , pp. 282-94. 

Disappoints Them on Every Hand. — He does not speculate about 
God, as a school professor, drawing out conclusions by a prac- 
tice on words, and deeming that the way of proof ; he does not 
build up a frame of evidence from below, by some constructive 
process, such as the philosophers delight in ; but he simply 
speaks of God, and spiritual things as one who has come out 
from Him to tell us what he knows. And his simple telling 
brings us the reality ; proves it to us in its own sublime self- 
evidence ; awakens even the consciousness of it in our own 
bosom ; so that formal arguments or dialectic proofs offend us 
by their coldness, and seem, in fact, to be only opaque sub- 
stances set between us and the light. Indeed, he makes even 
the world luminous by his words — fills it with an immediate 
and new sense of God, which nothing has ever been able to 
expel. The incense of the upper world is brought out, in his 
garments, and flows abroad, as a perfume, on the poisoned air. 

At the same time, he never reveals the infirmity so commonly 
shown by human teachers, when they veer a little from their 
point, or turn their doctrine off by shades of variation to 
catch the assent of multitudes. He never conforms to an 
expectation, even of his friends. When they look to find a 
great prophet in him, he offers nothing in the modes of the 
prophets. When they ask for places of distinction in his 
kingdom, he rebukes their folly, and tells them he has nothing 
to give but a share in his -reproaches and poverty. When they 
look to see him take the sword as the Great Messiah of their 
nation, he tells them he is only a messenger of love to lost 
men. Every expectation that rises up to meet him is repulsed, 
and yet so great is the power of his manner, that multitudes are 
held fast and cannot yield their confidence. Enveloped as he 
is in the darkest mystery, they trust him still; going after 
him, hanging on his words, as if detained by some charmed 
influence which they cannot shake off nor resist. Never was 
there a teacher that so uniformly baffled every expectation of 
his followers, never one that was followed so persistently. — 
BushnelVs Character of Christ. 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


549 


His Ideas Repugnant. — I see them surrounding him with eager 
looks, and ready to drink in every word from his lips. And 
what do I hear? Not one word of Judea, of Rome, of free- 
dom, of conquest, of the glories of God’s chosen people, and 
of the thronging of all nations to the temple on Mount Zion. 
Almost every word was a death-blow to the hopes and feelings 
which glowed through the whole people, and were consecrated 
under the name of religion. He speaks of the long-expected 
kingdom of heaven, but speaks of it as a felicity promised to, 
and only to be partaken by the humble and pure of heart. The 
righteousness of the Pharisees, that which was deemed the 
perfection of religion, and which the new deliverer was 
expected to spread far and wide, he pronounces worthless, 
and declares the kingdom of heaven, or of the Messiah, to be 
shut against all who do not cultivate a new, spiritual and dis- 
interested virtue. Instead of war and victory, he commands 
his impatient hearers to love, to forgive, to bless their enemies ; 
and holds forth this spirit of benignity, mercy and peace, as 
the special badge of the people of the true Messiah. Instead 
of national interests and glories, he commands them to seek 
first a spirit of impartial and unbounded love. — Charming. 

Character of Sermon on the Mount. — The hold which the Sermon 
on the Mount has had, and continues to have, upon men of 
diverse temperaments and beliefs, is not to be accounted for 
by an inventory of its ethical points. It reached to the very 
centre of rectitude, and gave to human conduct inspirations 
that will never diminish. All this might have been done in 
unsympathetic severity, leaving the Sermon like a mountain 
barrier between right and wrong, so rugged, barren, and solitary 
that men would not love to ascend or frequent it. But Jesus 
breathed over the whole an air of genial tranquillity that wins 
men to it as to a garden. The precepts grow like flowers, and 
are fragrant. The cautions and condemnations lie like sunny 
hedges or walls covered with moss or vines. In no part can it 
be called dreamy, yet it is pervaded by an element of sweetness 
and peace which charms us none the less because it eludes 
analysis. Like a mild day in early June, the sky, the earth, the 
air, the birds and herbage, things near and things far off, seem 
under some heavenly influence. The heavens unfold, and in 
place of dreadful deities we behold “ Our Father.” His per- 
sonal care is over all the affairs of life. The trials of this mortal 


550 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


sphere go on for a purpose of good. The end of life is a glori- 
fied manhood. At every step Jesus invokes the nobler motives 
of the human soul. There is nothing of the repulsiveness of 
morbid anatomy. Where the knife cut to the very nerve, it 
was a clean and wholesome blade, that carried no poison. Thus 
the Son of God stood among men, talking with them face to 
face as a brother, and giving to them, in his own spirit, glimpses 
of heavenly rest. 

The Sermon on the Mount gathers up the sum of all that had 
been gained under the Jewish Dispensation — distinguishes 
between the original and genuine elements of truth in the 
Jewish belief, and the modern and perverse inculcations of 
the Rabbis — and, above all, gives to familiar things, a new 
spiritual force and authority. 

At the Threshold He Looks Before and After. — At the threshold 
of the new life it was wise to ascertain what was real and what 
fictitious in the belief of the people. A repudiation of the 
Law and Prophets would have bewildered their moral sense ; 
but the truth of their fathers, cleansed from glosses, pure and 
simple, would become the instrument for working that very 
repentance which would prepare them for the new life of God 
in the soul. Men are fond of speaking of the originality of 
the Sermon on the Mount ; but originality would have defeated 
its very aim. All growth must sprout from roots pre-existing 
in the soul. There can be no new , except by the help of some 
old. To have spread out a novel field of unfamiliar truth 
before the people might have led them to speculation, but 
could not have aroused their conscience, nor rebuked the 
degradation of their very natures and the sordidness of their 
lives. It was the very aim of the Sermon on the Mount to 
place before the Jews, in the clearest light, the great truths 
out of which sprung their Law and their Prophets, as a prepa- 
ration for the new and higher developments that would come 
afterwards. In so doing Jesus put himself into the confidence 
of his own people. * * * * The 

Sermon on the Mount, then, being in the nature of an historical 
review, could not be original. It was a criticism of the 
received doctrine. Every part of it brings down to us 
the odor and flavor of the best days and the ripest things 
of the Old Testament dispensation. It was the mount from 
which men looked over into the promised land of the Spirit. 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


551 


The Beatitudes — What They Were. — The Beatitudes, then, were 
not new principles; the truth in them had been recognized 
before. They were truths hidden in the very nature of the 
soul, and, in the best sense, natural. But formerly they lay 
scattered as pearls not detached from the parent shell, or as 
rough diamonds unground. Here they first appear in brilliant 
setting. They are no longer happy sayings, but sovereign 
principles. They always spoke with instructiveness, but now 
with authority, as if they wore crowns upon their heads. 

There was a noble strangeness in them. The whole world 
was acting in a spirit contrary to them. They conflicted with 
every sentiment and maxim of common life. On a lonely hill- 
top sat one known to have been reared as a mechanic, pro- 
nouncing to a group of peasants, fishermen, mechanics, and 
foreigners the sublime truths of the higher and interior life of 
the soul, which have since by universal consent been deemed 
the noblest utterances of earth. The traveler may to-day stand 
in Antwerp, near the old cathedral, hearing all the clatter of 
business, a thousand feet tramping close up to the walls and 
buttresses against which lean the booths, a thousand tongues 
rattling the language of traffic, when, as the hour strikes from 
above, a shower of notes seems to descend from the spire, — 
bell notes, fine, sweet, small as a bird’s warble, the whole air 
full of crisp tinklings, underlaid by the deeper and sonorous 
tones of large bells, but all of them in fit sequences pouring 
forth a melody that seems unearthly, and the more because in 
such contrast with the scenes of vulgar life beneath. In some 
such way must these words have fallen upon the multitude. — 
Beecher : Life of Christ , pp. 312-14, 360. 

How to Interpret Christ’s Course. — As Christ’s sole calling as a 
teacher was to implant the fundamental truths of the Kingdom 
of God in the human consciousness, he could not stop by the 
way to battle with errors utterly unconnected with his object, 
and remote from the interests of religion and morality. Thus 
he made use of common terms and expressions without entering 
into an examination of all the false notions that might be attached 
to them. He called diseases, for instance, by the names in com- 
mon use; but we should not be justified in concluding that he 
thereby stamped with his Divine authority the ordinary notions 
of their origin as implied in the names. Kor does his citation 
of the books of the Old Testament by the accustomed titles 


552 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


imply any sanction on his part of the prevalent opinions in 
regard to their authors. We must never forget that his words 
as he himself has told us are Spirit and Life, and that no slave 
to the letter can rightly comprehend and apply them. 

It was not his aim to preserve the mere shell, the outward 
form, but to disengage the inner truth from its covering, and 
bring it out into free and pure development. This he could 
only effect by causing men to change their whole carnal mode 
of thinking. As the true and the false are commingled in their 
conceptions, he must seize upon the true as his point of depar- 
ture, in order to disengage it from the encumbering false. — 
Neander : Life of Christ , p. 114. 

Wliat Disclosures He Could Have Wade. — He could unquestion- 
ably have made disclosures which would have eclipsed, and 
consigned to oblivion all prior discoveries. As far as power is 
concerned, he could easily have embroiled the polemic world, 
by mystifying without misrepresenting every subject of earthly 
dispute. He could have uttered a single sentence, which, by 
furnishing a key to many a mystery, and affording a glimpse of 
arcana before unknown, would have collected and concentra- 
ted around it the busy thoughts of each successive generation 
to the close of time. Opening one of the numerous doors at 
which human curiosity has been knocking impatiently for ages, 
he could have admitted men to a tree of knowledge from which, 
age after age, they would have continued to pluck and partake, 
until the trump of God surprised them at their unholy feast, 
and found them unprepared for the summons. 

But he came to plant for them the tree of life, and to give 
them access to its healing fruits. And as he allowed nothing 
to divert his own attention from the accomplishment of this 
object, he guarded against everything likely to beguile them 
from seeking the benefit resulting from it. Truths which the 
lapse of time had seen displaced and disconnected from their 
true position, as stars are said to have wandered from their 
primal signs, he recalled and established anew ; and principles 
which had faded, disappeared, and been lost, as stars are said 
to have become extinct, he re-kindled and re-sphered, and 
commanded them to stand fast forever. — Harris' Great Teacher. 

Why Jesus was Superior to Solon, Confucius, Etc.— Let it be 
granted that all the moral precepts of the gospel were known 
by somebody or other, amongst mankind before. But where, 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


553 


or how, or of what use, is not considered. Suppose they may 
be picked up here and there ; some from Solon and Bias in 
Greece ; others from Tully in Italy ; and to complete the work, 
let Confucius, as far as China, be consulted ; and Anacharsis, 
the Scythian, contribute his share. What will all this do to 
give the world a complete morality, that may be to mankind 
the unquestionable rule of life and manners ! I will not here 
urge the impossibility of collecting from men so far distant 
from one another, in time, and place, and languages. I will 
suppose there was a Stobeus in those times who had gathered 
the moral sayings from all the sages of the world. What 
would this amount to, towards being a steady rule, a certain 
transcript of a law that we are under! Did the saying of 
Aristippus or Confucius give it an authority! Was Zeno a 
lawgiver to mankind ! If not, what he or any other philoso- 
pher delivered was but a saying of his. Mankind might 
hearken to it or reject it, as they pleased, or as it suited 
their interest, passions, principles or humors ; they were 
under no obligation ; the opinion of this or that philosopher 
was of no authority ; and if it were, you must take all he said 
under the same character . All his dictates must go for law, 
certain and true, or none of them. Nobody that I know, before 
our Savior’s time, ever did, or went about to give us a morality. 
Where was there such a code, that mankind might have recourse 
to, as their unerring rule, before our Savior’s time ! — Locke : 
Reasonableness of Christianity , pp. 187-9. 

Christianity the Main Source of Civilization.— There is one 
example of a religion which is not naturally weakened by civ- 
ilization, and that example is Christianity. In all other cases 
the decay of dogmatic conceptions is tantamount to a complete 
annihilation of religion; for although there may be imperish- 
able elements of moral truth mingled with those conceptions, 
they have nothing distinctive or peculiar. The moral truths 
coalesce with new systems, the men who uttered them take 
their place with many others in the pantheon of history, and 
the religion having discharged its functions is spent and 
withered. But the great characteristic of Christianity, and 
the great moral proof of its divinity, is that it has been the main 
source of the moral development of Europe, and that it has dis- 
charged this office not so much by the inculcation of a system of 
ethics, however pure, as by the assimilating and attractive 


554 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


influence of a perfect ideal. The moral progress of mankind 
can never cease to be distinctively and intensely Christian as 
long as it consists of a gradual approximation to the character 
of the Christian Founder. There is, indeed, nothing more 
wonderful in the history of the human race than the way in 
which that ideal has traversed the lapse of ages, acquiring a 
new strength and beauty with each advance of civilization, and 
infusing its beneficent influence into every sphere of thought 
and action. — Lecky : Rationalism , Vol I, pp. 311-12. 

A Unique Phenomenon. — Yet more and more with advancing 
years the moral idea stood out from all dogmatic conceptions ; 
its divinity was recognized by its perfection ; and it is no exag- 
geration to say, that at no former period was it so powerful, or 
so universally acknowledged as at present. This is a phenom- 
enon altogether unique in history : and to those who recognize 
in the highest type of excellence the highest revelation of the 
Deity, its importance is too manifest to be overlooked. — Lecky: 
Rationalism , Vol, I, p. 313. 

Great Error in Infidelity Concerning Christianity. — Nothing, too, 
can, as I conceive, be more erroneous or superficial than the 
reasonings of those who maintain that the moral element of 
Christianity has in it nothing distinctive or peculiar. The 
method of this school of which Bolingbroke may be regarded 
as the type, is to collect from the writings of different heathen 
writers certain isolated passages embodying precepts that are 
inculcated by Christianity; and when the collection had 
become very large the task was supposed to be accomplished. 
But the true originality of a system of moral teaching depends 
not so much upon the elements of which it is composed, as upon 
the manner in which they are fused into a symmetrical whole, 
upon the proportionate value that is attached to different 
qualities, or, to state the same thing by a single word, upon the 
type of character that is formed. Now, it is quite certain that 
the Christian type differs not only in degree, but in kind from 
the Pagan one. — Lecky : Rationalism , Vol I, p. 313. 

Source of Self-sacrifice. — The history of self-sacrifice during 
the past eighteen hundred years, has been mainly the history 
of the action of Christianity upon the world. Ignorance and 
error have, no doubt, often directed the heroic spirit into 
wrong channels, and have sometimes even made it a cause of 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


555 


great evil to mankind ; but it is the moral type and beauty, the 
enlarged conceptions and persuasive power of the Christian 
faith, that have chiefly called it into being, and it is by their 
influence alone that it can be permanently sustained. The 
power of Christianity in this respect can only cease with the 
annihilation of the moral nature of mankind. — Lecky: Ration- 
alism, Vol. II, p. 354. 

Suits the Spiritual Nature of Ulan.— The chief cause of its 
success was the congruity of its teaching with the spiritual 
nature of mankind. It was because it was true to the moral 
sentiments of the age, because it represented faithfully the 
supreme type of excellence to which men were then tending, 
because it corresponded with their religious wants, aims and 
emotions, because the whole spiritual being could then expand 
and expatiate under its influence, that it planted its roots 
so deeply in the hearts of men. — Lecky: European Morals, 
Vol. I, p. 388. 

[Lecky being the latest and most thorough rationalistic historian, and 
being relied on by infidel disputants, the above quotations are exceed- 
ingly significant and valuable. — Ed.~\ 

No Original Savage Condition of Mankind.— We are often told 
of tendencies inherent in human nature which will work out by 
themselves the perfection of the human life. We are treated, 
in our time, to much talk about evolution and development, by 
which man has grown, first from a lower order of creation to a 
savage state, and then has risen from the savage, through suc- 
cessive stages, to the highest plane of civilized life. But such 
talk is in flat contradiction to the most palpable facts of history. 
We find no evidence of an originally savage condition of man- 
kind. The earliest historic records we have of human life 
upon the earth are records of cities and sciences, and monu- 
ments of art and governments, all showing a condition of high 
individual and social power. The traditions of different nations 
point back to a primeval period which was a golden age of 
innocence and knowledge. There is good evidence that the 
Great Pyramid is the oldest work of human hands now exist- 
ing ; and this stupendous structure, which forty centuries have 
left almost unimpaired, shows a skill and science in its builders 
which are still the admiration and wonder of the world. The 
earliest facts of language, the deep knowledge of architecture 
and astronomy and geometry and natural philosophy, which 


556 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


incontestably existed in the earliest times of which we have 
any trace, in Egypt and Chaldea and India and China, the 
prominence and the power with which religion controlled the 
political and social order, and entered into the science and the 
art of the ancient world, are simply inexplicable, if barbarism 
or a savage state were the original condition of the race. 

It Was Decay Rather Than Progress.— The history of men, thus 
far, shows vastly more instances of decay than of progress. 
Governments, arts, languages, literatures, sciences, civiliza- 
tions, religions, have deteriorated in instances unnumbered. 
Law has grown into despotism ; liberty has degenerated into 
license; public morals have been sunk in public corruption ; 
and the virtues of men have been supplanted by their vices on 
so vast a scale that, whether in respect of the numbers it has 
controlled, or the extent of time and territory which it has 
covered, a downward tendency in human nature, it must be 
confessed, is vastly more conspicuous than any inherent 
tendency to improve. 

Downward Tendency Never Self-checked. — This downward ten- 
dency, moreover, has never been checked by itself. Ho nation 
has ever risen, by its own forces alone, from a lower to a higher 
state. All upward impulses come first from above. The savage 
has never civilized himself. “Ho man,” says Herder, “has the 
birth of his mind, any more than that of his body, through 
himself alone.” And it is with masses as it is with individuals ; 
the impulse to rise, and the inspiration to rise, must come from 
without. * * * “Civilization,” says Hiebuhr, one of 

the most sagacious of all historians, “ is never indigenous ; it is 
an exotic plant wherever found.” 

Given then this actual state of the unchristian world, given, 
also, this tendency to deteriorate, and this inability in human 
nature to better itself, what sort of counteracting impulse is 
needed? * * * Hoes commerce civilize? Can trade 

of itself make men pure? Unless guided and guarded by some 
other influence than their own, is there anything in buying or 
selling to make men better ? Hay, does not the greed of gain 
grow by its own exercise ?******* 

Do Railroads and Telegraphs Make Us Moral?— Will railroads 
and telegraphs and the conveniences of modern life give us any 
hope? Why should they? Does the use of railroads make men 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


557 


honest here ? Is the management of these great institutions a 
conspicuous agency of moral reform among ourselves ? * * 

Nowise man will decry intellectual culture. Only ignorance 
despises knowledge. But the knowledge which is not inspired 
by virtue can give no inspiration to virtue. Unless it strikes 
its roots in a soil already pure, its blossoms and fruit will be 
only corrupt and corrupting. A godless education is not an 
object of wise desire for any people. It has no power to purify, 
and thus no salvation. It does not draw out the roots of evil, 
but rather, strikes them deeper into the soul. It may deck the 
evil in a garb of beauty, and weave for it garlands of song; but 
it is evil none the less ; and by making its manifestations more 
attractive, it only enables it, like Satan when robed in his gar- 
ments of light, the more effectually to deceive .— Professor 
Seely e : Christian Missions , pp. 26-49. 

What Christ’s Religion Has Done for Hen.— On the last of the 
great religious conceptions which follow inflexibly from the 
fact of God in Man — the conception of an equal and universal 
brotherhood of the race — I have often dwelt from this place. 
It is sufficient to say now that its practical results are as 
important as they are many. It is the foundation of 
all effort to civilize barbarian peoples; it is the root 
and end of all noble legislation, of all just government. 
It is the inspiring impulse of the theory and practice 
of national education ; it is the mainspring of all 
charity; it is the fountain from which flow all redemptive 
measures for the outcast and the criminal ; it is the principle on 
which all the relations of capital and labor should be based ; it 
is the idea which overthrows all tyrannies, all oppression, all 
slavery, all exclusive castes, all class denomination, all at- 
tempts to concentrate all the land and all the money of a 
country in the hands of a few. It has been the warcry and 
the watchword of all noble revolution. It is leading the 
peoples of the world, slowly but surely, to a political future of 
equality, for religious conceptions are naturally and necessarily 
transferred to political ; it is leading the various nations of the 
world to a far-off international union, on a higher ground than 
that of commercial interest. It will finally end in the destruc- 
tion of all international and individual envying, strife, vain- 
glorying, and trickery to get the upper hand ; and in the estab- 
lishment of a unity of mankind in which all shall be equal, 


558 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


free and fraternal . — Stopford Brooke: Christ in Modern Life , 
pp. 85-6. 

Christianity and Materialism Contrasted.— Christianity makes 
man a co-worker with God in this glorious work. Again we 
emphasize the inexpressible dignity and grandeur with which 
Christianity clothes man, in giving to him so glorious a work, 
and so exalted a position as a co-worker with God in it. 
Materialism has no idea to correspond with this. Man is to 
study the ongoings of matter and force in time-succession, and, 
instead of working with an Infinite Being, he is to avoid being 
crushed by the remorseless monstrous machine. Christianity 
teaches man that he is to accomplish his own elevation into 
love and righteousness, by giving himself in loving self-sacri- 
fice, toil and self-denial and devotion for the elevation of others. 
It teaches the martyr’s zeal and devotion, the philanthropist’s 
sacrifices, as the noblest of virtues, the height of wisdom, and 
gives the only motive that can cause them. Materialism 
teaches that man is to study the ongoings of nature in time- 
succession and accommodate himself to them, and, by selfish 
prudence in the struggle for life, get all the selfish gratification 
he can. It makes the acts of the martyr, patriot, and philan- 
thropist a folly, a violation of the supreme law of nature, a 
crime. Christianity teaches that all things were created by 
God our Father in Heaven, Infinite in Wisdom, Power, and 
Love. Materialism teaches that all things are the result of 
the irrational happenings of blind, irrational matter and force. 
Christianity teaches that all things are governed in wisdom 
and law by our Father in Heaven. Materialism teaches that 
all things are under the control of fatal, iron necessity, or the 
blind, fortuitous ongoings of blind, irrational matter and force. 
Its talk of law is utter absurdity. There can be no law or 
basis for law in such a system. Christianity teaches us that 
there is a rational personality apart from matter, or there is 
spirit. It teaches that we can look up to God, who is infinite 
Spirit, to Christ, to the Holy Spirit, and to angels, and that we 
have spirits like them in nature. Materialism denies all this, 
and teaches that mind is but a function of matter, and what we 
call spirit is but a modification of physical force. It turns our 
thoughts down to the force seen in animals, vegetables, and in 
physical nature. From this we came; to this we return. 
Christianity assures us there is an eternal future life, in which 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


559 


we will spend an eternity in making endless approximations to 
the infinite perfections of the Divine Mind, in whose mental 
and moral likeness we were created. Materialism declares, 

“ What went before man, and what is to follow after him, is to 
be regarded as two black impenetrable curtains, which hang 
down at the extremes of human life, and which nothing has 
ever drawn to one side. A deep silence reigns behind these 
curtains. When once within, no one will ever answer those he 
left behind. All you can hear is a hollow echo to your own 
question, as if you had shouted into a yawning fathomless 
chasm.” — Holyoake. Christianity teaches men that they are free 
in volition to choose truth or falsehood, good or evil. It 
clothes man with the dignity of rational freedom, governed by 
"intelligence and motive. Materialism makes man a part of 
material nature, and denies and scouts all idea of freedom. 
Man’s actions are a part of the necessitated ongoings of nature. 
Christianity teaches that there is moral desert in action and 
character. Materialism has no basis for it, renders it utterly 
impossible and utterly denies it. 

Christianity reveals sin as a fact, and evil as a reality, in the 
lives, conduct and experience of men. It gives a clear revela- 
tion and clear teaching concerning the nature of sin, and a 
perfect standard for testing and deciding what is sinful. It 
consists in rebellion against the Supreme Authority and just 
law of God. In selfishness and love of self, and devoting life 
to self. Love of evil and impurity. Hatred of holiness and 
justice. Materialism denies the existence of sin and evil, for 
it makes all things and acts alike, the evolutions of blind, 
irrational matter and force. All are on an equality, and are alike 
witho ut character or moral quality, for there can be no standard 
and no difference in nature. Christianity teaches that God, as 
our Father in Heaven, has revealed Himself, His character and 
will, as a means of saving us from sin, as a means of giving us 
a perfect religion, and a perfect rule of life. Materialism tells 
us we are left to the gropings of our erring, doubting, sinful 
natures, in the gloom of irrational matter and force. Chris- 
tianity teaches that God has revealed His will and scheme of 
redemption by inspiration of chosen men, thus making man a 
co-worker with Him, and giving to revelation a human element, 
suiting it to man’s nature. Materialism scouts all such idea, 
and leaves man to get his inspiration from studying the on- 


560 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


goings of blind matter and force. Christianity teaches that 
God manifested Himself in miracles, giving evidence of His 
presence, and credentials of revelation, by making a higher 
use and display of nature and nature’s laws than man could 
make, thus cultivating man’s religious nature, and awe and 
Generation. Materialism makes a fetich of matter and force, 
and their ongoings are too sacred to be modified by intelligence, 
and for the highest wants of intelligences, even if a higher and 
more exalted use of nature be made by superior intelligences 
for the highest wants of man. 

Christianity teaches that as our Father in Heaven, God has 
given to man warning of future events ; cheered him with 
promises of future blessings, and sustains and solaces him in 
trial and danger with prophecy. Materialism leaves him to 
grope his way in doubt and perturbation, amid the ongoings of 
blind, irrational matter and force. Christianity takes the uni- 
versal custom and idea of sacrifice, and does away with all 
sacrifice of life and shedding of blood, by a perfect sacrifice, 
the Son of God. It requires of men that they present their 
bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, and their 
spirits as sacrifices in praise and worship and living righteous 
lives, and all their labor in devotion to righteousness, love and 
goodness. Materialism declares our nature a delusion and a 
cheat in this idea of sacrifice. 

Christianity offers to men redemption from evil, salvation 
from the love of sin, the practice of sin, the guilt of sin, the 
punishment of sin. Materialism denies the reality of sin, in 
opposition to the feeling of every heart, and offers no redemp- 
tion. Study nature and keep step with the machine. Christian- 
ity requires an entire reformation of nature, thought and con- 
duct, heart and life, so radical as to be expressed only by 
regeneration, being born again. Materialism scouts and ridi- 
cules this idea, and has no means or basis for reformation. It 
would never produce it. Christianity teaches that if men repent 
from the heart, and forsake sin, God, as their Father in heaven, 
will forgive them, and aid them in a life of reformation and 
righteousness. Materialism denies all forgiveness, and has no 
basis or hope for it. Christianity furnishes to men a perfect 
system of universal and eternal truth to be believed, a perfect 
system of adoration and worship of a perfect Being, and a per- 
fect rule of life, giving perfect teaching concerning man’s duty 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


561 


to God, his fellow-man, and himself. Materialism has nothing 
of this sort. Man is to study physical nature, which would not 
give him a moral idea or truth, or rule for conduct, except selfish 
prudence. Christianity gives to man the church, perfect in its 
organization and officers, with perfect ordinances and services, 
preaching and teaching, perfect truth in morals and religion, 
and exalted and eternal themes of thought, cultivation and 
elevation, prayer, praise, benevolence and holiness of life. 
Christianity requires, at man’s hands, a perfect consecration 
of life. Love to God with his whole being, and his neighbor 
as himself, a life molded and regulated by this rule of life, which 
is perfect in teaching and model. Materialism lacks all this. 
Christianity presents, as the end of labor and work, the ele- 
vation of the race into love and righteousness, and men are 
co-workers with God in this, giving themselves, in loving self- 
sacrifice, for this end. Materialism, with its selfish, sensual 
origin and supreme law, has not a suggestion of this. It con- 
demns it and renders it a fallacy, a crime, for it is a violation 
of its supreme law. 

Christianity has the most exalted object that mind can con- 
ceive or heart cherish — the elevation of all men into universal 
love and righteousness, by the development and expansion of 
this mental and moral likeness of God, in which man was created 
by love and practice of righteous love and goodness. Materi- 
alism utterly lacks this idea. It has no basis for it in its selfish 
struggle for life in which the strongest survives . — Clark Braden: 
Problem of Problems. 

If Human Authority— Whose 1--I am a plain man; I have no 
more time or ability to enter into these subtleties, than into the 
deep critical questions which you say are involved in the 
investigation of the truth of the gospel. I confess that one of 
my chief arguments, though not the only one, is drawn from 
authority ; from what they say who have, as I believe, gone 
thoroughly into all these matters ; and I am puzzled to know 
why I should rather believe you when you tell me that the 
gospel is false, than them when they tell me it is true. I can- 
not conceive that the original authors of Christianity had any 
motives to deceive the world, and as little why these defenders 
of it should deceive me. 

As to knowledge and character, I cannot, for the life of me, 
say that Bolingbroke is worthier of my attention than Butler; 
jl 


562 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


Tom Paine than Paley; Voltaire than Pascal; Hobbes than 
Locke. But, pray, don’t suppose that authority is my only or 
chief reason for belief. No ! I believe because I cannot help 
it. As I read the gospels and epistles, in spite of many things 
nature does not like, I can’t help believing them true. They 
are so stamped with honesty and guileless simplicity with 
such an inimitable air of truth, that if they lie, Nature herself 
has lied . — Henry Rogers in “ Greyson Letters/’ p. 416. 

Establishment of Christianity the Most Memorable Event, Etc.— 
Whether we regard the history of Christ as true or false, 
there can be no question that the establishment of Christianity 
is the most memorable event in the history of our race ; that 
which has produced the greatest and most permanent effects 
upon the character and condition of men. To produce such 
results, some most extraordinary cause and causes must have 
been in operation. 

New Aspects Assumed Where Truth is Denied.— But if the ac- 
count of those causes which we, as Christians, receive, be not 
true, the whole early history of Christianity will assume a new 
aspect. Imagine fraud, enthusiasm, mistake, singular combina- 
tions of circumstances — all, or anything that can be moulded 
into a plausible scheme to account for the origin and rapid 
progress of our religion; still, if it was not, as repre- 
sented, a religion from God, established by miraculous 
proof, all its original bearings, upon every individual, and every 
subject with which it had relation, must have been essentially 
different from what we conceive them to have been. As 
we suppose the religion true or false, we are obliged to suppose 
causes in action of the most opposite character — the power 
of God in one case, and fraud and delusion, or error, of what- 
ever kind it may be fancied, in the other. * * * * 

If Christianity were false, we should find clear marks of false- 
hood in the history of Jesus ; in the conduct, preaching, and 
writings of those teachers who immediately succeeded him ; in 
the accounts of its propagation ; in the direct and indirect 
notices of its early converts ; in its real or pretended bearings 
upon the history of the times ; and especially in its moral and 
doctrines. Truth is always consistent, and discovers itself in 
all its aspects and connections ; and hence it is, that we can 
investigate scarcely any subject relating to the early history 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


563 


of our religion without some new confirmation of our faith. — 
Norton’s “ Genuineness/’ p. 544. 

[All this applies to Old Testament, as well as New. — Ed.] 

The Temptations of the Early Christians.— St. Paul had now 
been absent from the Corinthians for nearly three years, and 
they may well have longed— as we see that they did long — for 
his presence with an earnestness which even made them unjust 
toward him. The little band of converts — mostly of low 
position, and some of them slaves of the most degraded rank 
— were left in the midst of a heathendom which presented 
itself at Corinth under the gayest and most alluring aspects. 
It is not in a day that the habits of a life can be thrown aside. 
Even those among them whose conversion was most sincere 
had yet a terrible battle to fight against two temptations ; the 
temptation to dishonesty, which had mingled with their means 
of gaining a livelihood, and the temptation to sensuality, which 
was interwoven with the very fibres of their being. With 
Christianity awoke conscience. Sins to which they had once 
lightly yielded as matters of perfect indifference, now required 
an intense effort to resist and overcome, and every failure, so 
far from being at the worst a venial weakness, involved the 
agonies of remorse and shame. And when they remembered 
the superficially brighter and easier lives which they had spent 
while they were yet pagans ; when, they daily witnessed how 
much sin there might be with so little apparent sorrow; when 
they felt the burdens of their life doubled, and those earthly 
pleasures which they had once regarded as its own alleviations 
rendered impossible or wrong — while as yet they were unable 
to realize the exquisite consolation of Christian joy and Chris- 
tian hope — they were tempted either to relapse altogether, or 
to listen with avidity to any teacher whose doctrines, if 
logically developed, might help to relax the stringency of their 
sacred obligations. 

While Paul was with them they were comparatively safe. The 
noble tyranny of his personal influence acted on them like a 
spell ; and with his presence to elevate, his words to inspire, 
his example to encourage them, they felt it more easy to fling 
away all that was lower and viler because they could realize 
their right to what was higher and holier. But when he had 
been so long away — when they were daily living in the great 


564 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


wicked streets, among the cunning, crowded merchants, in 
sight and hearing of everything which could quench spiritual 
aspirations and kindle cardinal desires ; when the gay, common 
life went on around them, and the chariot-wheels of the Lord 
were still afar — it was hardly wonderful if the splendid vision 
began to fade. ******* 

Weak Nature Looking Backwards. — Alas ! Corinth was not 
heaven, and the prose of daily life followed on the poetry of 
their first enthusiasm, and it was difficult to realize that, for 
them, those living streets might be daily brightened with manna 
dews. Their condition was like the pause and sigh of Lot’s 
wife, as, amid the sulphurous storm, she gazed back on the 
voluptuous ease of the City of the Plain. Might they no longer 
taste of the plentiful Syssitia on some festive day? Might they 
not walk at twilight in the laughing bridal procession, and listen 
to the mirthful jest 1 Might they not watch the Hieroduli dance 
at some lovely festival in the Temples of Acrocorinth ? Was 
all life to be hedged in for them with thorny scruples ? Were 
they to gaze henceforth in dreaming phantasy, not upon bright 
faces of youthful deities, garlanded with rose and hyacinth, but 
on the marred visage of one who was crowned with thorns ? 
Oh! it was hard to choose the Kingdom of God; hard to 
remember that now they were delivered out of the land of 
Egypt; hard for their enervation to breathe the eager and 
difficult air of the pure wilderness. It was hard to give up 
the coarse and near for the immaterial and far ; hard not to 
lust after the reeking fleshpots, and not to loathe the light 
angel food ; hard to give up the purple wine in the brimming 
goblet for the cold water from the spiritual rock ; hard to curb 
apd crucify passions which once they had consecrated under 
guise of religion ; hard not to think all these temptations irre- 
sistible, and to see the way of escape which God had appointed 
them for each; hard to be bidden to rejoice, and not to be 
suffered even to murmur at all these hardnesses of life. And 
the voice which had taught them the things of God had now 
for so long been silent ; for three years they had not seen the 
hand which pointed them to heaven. It was with some of them 
as with Israel, when Moses was on Sinai; they sat down to eat 
and drink, and rose up to play. Many, very many — some in 
shame and secrecy, others openly justifying their relapse by 
the devil-doctrines of perverted truth — had plunged once more 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


565 


into the impurity, the drunkenness, and the selfishness, as 
though they had never heard the heavenly calling, or tasted 
the eternal gift. — F. W. Farrar: Life and Work of St. Paul , 
Chapter 3 2d. 

Christianity Known By Its Fruits. — If we apply to Christianity 
the maxim : “ By their fruits ye shall know them,” if we judge 
of its origin and character by its moral effects, we find it not 
only the purest and best of all religions, but absolutely the 
only true and perfect religion. It alone makes genuine morality 
possible, and brings it to perfection. The pagan religions em- 
bosom a great mass of immoral principles and practices, and 
even sanction them by their opinions concerning the gods, in 
whom we find the concentrated essence of all human passions. 
We discover, indeed, in Confucius, Socrates, Plato, Cicero, 
Seneca, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, and other ancient sages, a 
multitude of most beautiful precepts and most exalted moral 
maxims. But they have neither improved the world nor saved 
a single sinner. They are isolated flashes of light which cannot 
make day. They lack an all-pervading principle ; they lack 
unity, completeness, and vital energy. Action is the most 
powerful preaching. Life alone can kindle life. On far higher 
grounds stands Judaism, which is not the offspring of unaided, 
erratic fancy and speculation, but a divine revelation, and has 
constantly in view the glory of God, and the holiness of man. 
Yet it is but the shadow of a future substance, a preparation 
for Him who has fulfilled the law and the prophets, presented 
in his life the ideal of holy love, reconciled man with God, and 
thereby opened the only pure fountain of true virtue. * * * 
Christianity, therefore, is literally a new moral creation, not, 
however, annihilating the old, but delivering its energies from 
the corruption and bondage of sin, and raising them to perfec- 
tion . — Philip Schaff: Apostolic Church, p. 433. 

Christianity a School.— Christianity is a school of Judaism; 
but it is the school which absorbs and interprets the teaching 
of all others. It is a development; but it is that development 
which was divinely foreknown and predetermined. It is the 
grain of which mere Judaism is now the worthless husk. It is 
the image of Truth in its full proportions ; and the Jewish rem- 
nants are now as the shapeless fragments which remain of the 
block of marble when the statue is completed. When we look 


566 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


back at the Apostolic age, we see that growth proceeding 
which separated the husk from the grain. We see the image 
of Truth coming out in clear expressiveness, and the useless 
fragments falling off like scales, under the careful work of 
divinely-guided hands . — Conybeare and ZTowson, p. 29. 

Contrast Between Christianity and All Other Religions. — No pen- 
ance, nor prayer, nor sacrifice, nor rites, nor any deeds which 
man could do, are allowed to have the least efficacy in procuring 
the blessings which the gospel announces. # # 

All other systems of religion announce the divine favor only as 
the result of human efforts to obtain it ; and hence the abun- 
dance of penances and prayers, and deeds of fancied self- 
righteousness, which all these systems enjoin as means to 
appease and purchase the favors of God. No one of all the 
unchristian religions of the world offers any divine boon, 
except in return for a service which must first have been 
rendered from those by whom the blessing is to be received. 

It is a great mistake, therefore, and shows a wonderfully 
shallow acquaintance with the whole subject, when men classify 
Christianity with other systems, and the Bible with other books, 
as utterances all, in different forms, of man’s religious nature. 
This is true of Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Brahminisin, of the 
Koran, the Yedas, and so on. These are utterances, sometimes 
pathetic, and often very profound, of man’s sense of need and 
dependence, and also of his striving for that divine fellowship 
which he feels he needs. But Christianity is an utterance of 
the divine fullness ; and the Bible does not so much declare the 
human sense of want as it does the divine supply. The differ- 
ence between the Christian and every other religion is, there- 
fore, infinite, — a difference which, however we may account for 
it is yet so great and so clear, that while we may properly clas- 
sify all other religions as expressing, in different forms, the one 
human yearning and seeking-after God, Christianity alone pos- 
sesses the thought, a thought which penetrates it through and 
through, of a divine yearning and seeking-after man. “The 
Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” 
— Professor J. II. Seely e : Christian Missions , pp. 61-2. 

Principles of Christ in Operation.— On the Beatitude, which says, 
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of 
heaven,” he remarks : 

“This was so new, and so opposite to the ideas of all pagan 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


567 


moralists that they thought this temper of mind a criminal and 
contemptible meanness, which must induce men to sacrifice the 
glory of their country, and their own honor, to a shameful 
pusillanimity; and such it appears to almost all who are called 
Christians, even at this day, who not only reject it in practice, 
but disavow it in principle, notwithstanding this explicit decla- 
ration of their Master. We see them revenging the smallest 
affronts by premeditated murder, as individuals, on principles 
of honor; and, in their national capacities, destroying each 
other with fire and sword, for the low considerations of com- 
mercial interests, the balance of rival powers, or the ambition 
of princes. We see them with their last breath animating 
each other to a savage revenge, and in the agonies of death, 
plunging with feeble arms, their daggers into the hearts of 
their opponents ; and what is still worse, we hear all these 
barbarisms celebrated by historians, flattered by poets, ap- 
plauded in theaters, approved in senates, and even sanctified 
in pulpits. But universal practice cannot alter the nature of 
things, nor universal error change the nature of truth. Pride 
was not made for man, but humility, meekness, and resignation ; 
that is, poorness of spirit was made for man, and properly 
belongs to his dependent and precarious situation ; and is the 
only disposition of mind which can enable him to enjoy ease 
and quiet here, and happiness hereafter. Yet was this impor- 
tant precept entirely unknown until it was promulgated by him 
who said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid 
them not ; for of such is the kingdom of heaven ; verily, I say 
unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as 
a little child, he shall not enter therein.’ ” 

Another precept, equally new and no less excellent, is for- 
giveness of injuries. “You have heard,” says Christ to his 
disciples, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thy enemy; 
but I say unto you, love your enemies ; bless them that curse 
you; do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that 
despitefully use you, and persecute you.” This was a lesson 
so new and so utterly unknown, until taught by his doctrine, 
and enforced by his example, that the wisest moralists of the 
wisest nations and ages, represented the desire of revenge as 
a mark of a noble mind, and the accomplishment of it as one 
of the chief felicities attendant on a fortunate man. But how 
much more magnanimous, how much more beneficial to man- 


568 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


kind, is forgiveness ! It is more magnanimous, because every 
generous and exalted disposition of the human mind is requi- 
site to the practice of it; for these alone can enable us to bear 
the wrongs and insults of wickedness and folly with patience, 
and to look down on the perpetrators of them with pity rather 
than with indignation ; these alone can teach us, that such are 
but a part of those sufferings allotted to us in this state of 
probation, and to know, that to overcome evil with good, is 
the most glorious of all victories; it is the most beneficial, 
because this amiable conduct alone can put an end to an 
eternal succession of injuries and retaliations; for every 
retaliation becomes a new injury, and requires another act of 
revenge for satisfaction. But would we observe this salutary 
precept, to love our enemies, and to do good to those who 
despitefully use us ; this obstinate benevolence would at last 
conquer the most inveterate hearts, and we should have no 
enemies to forgive. How much more exalted a character, 
therefore, is a Christian martyr, suffering with resignation, and 
praying for the guilty, than a pagan hero, breathing revenge 
and destroying the innocent! Yet noble and useful as this 
virtue is, before the appearance of this religion, it was not 
only unpracticed, but decried in principle as mean and igno- 
minious, though so obvious a remedy for most of the miseries 
of this life, and so necessary a qualification for the happiness 
of another. 77 — Soame Jenyns , pp. 39-42. 

The Christian’s Joy. — The golden paradoxes of Paul speak more 
in praise of Christianity than all the encomiums ever pronounced 
upon it. To hear men persecuted, reproached, and destitute of 
almost every earthly comfort, say, 44 We are sorrowful, yet always 
rejoicing ; we are poor, yet making many rich; we have nothing, 
yet possessing all things,” transcends all the encomiums from all 
the orators of Greece, Rome, and England, pronounced upon 
virtue, the gods, and religion. 

Fancy to yourselves, my friends, a society in which such char- 
acters shall have the rule, and then you want no poet to describe 
the millennium to you. Peace, harmony, love, and universal 
good-will, must be the order of the day. There wants nothing 
— believe me, my friends, there wants nothing— but a restora- 
tion of ancient Christianity, and a cordial reception of it, to 
fill the world with all the happiness, physical, intellectual, and 
moral, which beings like us, in this state of trial, could endure 
— shall I say ? yes, endure, and enjoy. 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


569 


What They Have Done for Woman.— But even yet, were we to 
close our remarks upon the tendencies of Christianity, upon 
the subject of it, and upon society at large, we should fail in 
doing justice to this item. We must not only speak in general 
terms of its influences upon the human family ; we must look at 
it in detail. We must ask, What has it done for woman ? Yes 
— for woman — created to be the helpmate of man? In all pagan 
lands, and even among the Jews, she has been made little else 
than a slave to the passion and to the tyranny of man. The 
Jews rather exile her from the synagogue, as altogether animal 
in her nature ; and the rude savage makes her more a beast of 
burden than a companion for man ; doomed to incessant toils, 
to all the real drudgeries of life. Paganism, in its most improved 
forms, leaves her without a taste for rational enjoyment, and 
without a taste of it. The Jews and Pagans, for ages back, have 
scarce recognized that she has any claims upon man, more than 
for food and raiment, and these, indeed, are often dispensed to 
her without a smile. But some half dozen of female names have 
come down to us in the annals of Grecian and Boman story, as 
having attracted much attention from their cotemporaries, or 
as deserving much admiration from posterity. Natural affec- 
tion, in defiance of pagan darkness, superstition, and cruelty, 
did, in some few instances, snatch some individual females from 
the empire of night, and gave them a place among the reputable 
characters of antiquity. But the sex, as such , were almost uni- 
versally neglected. But from the time that Gabriel visited the 
cottage of Mary , the mother of our Lord, down to the present, 
wherever Christianity has found its way, the female sex has 
been emancipated from ignorance, bondage, and obscurity. It 
has been the aim and the glory of Christianity, my female 
friends, to elevate your sex from the degradation of Pagan- 
ism, and to make you the rational, the useful, and the amiable 
companion of mUn. To it you are indebted for that influence 
which you now possess, and ought to possess, in forming the 
character of man. While Christianity had made you not the 
inferior, but the companion and the equal of man, it has taught 
you that you are to pay the impost which, for this honor, it has 
laid you under. That is, that you are to bring up your offspring 
in the discipline and education which the Lord enjoins; that 
you are to use all your influence in casting the minds of those 
under your control, into the mold of the Apostle’s doctrine. 


570 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


This is the way you can perpetuate the blessings you enjoy, 
and leave behind you sons and daughters, who will feel them- 
selves equals, and mutually love, honor, and esteem one 
another. Let me remind you that there are more individuals 
of your sex honored in the New Testament, more of them named, 
more of them applauded, and more true courtesy shown them, 
than is to be found in all the other works of the Augustan age; 
and let all the world know that in the New Testament it is a 
maxim that in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female, 
but that both sexes are one in all moral, religious, and social 
privileges and enjoyments of which either sex is susceptible. — 
A. Campbell : Evidences . 

What Runs All Through the Savior’s System.— The poor sick child 
that tosses in hot fever on your bosom, yearns for health, for rest, 
for ease, for water, for the heaven-provided fount ; it makes no 
nice inquiries of the pathologist. The poor sin-sick soul is 
dying for the one gift which the New Testament calls Righteous- 
ness. Every one who has ever come to the good Physician 
knows the burning wish. Every heathen sage, like Cyprian 
and Justin, went through what had previously been the experi- 
ence of every Hebrew apostle, such as John or Saul. There 
runs through all the Gospel, as the deep base of a harmony, 
this consciousness of sin. And the aged and beloved disciple, 
always a minister of love, and always sorrowing to give even 
necessary pain, approaches the bedside of his patients with 
looks and words of unusual pity, as fearing to uncover the 
wound which he must probe. His desire is for their holiness ; 
“ My little children, these things write I unto you that ye sin 
not.” This is the great and blessed end, sinlessness, like that 
of the Sinless One. “This,” says Calvin, “is not only a sum- 
ming-up of what goes before, but, so to speak, a recapitulation 
of the whole Gospel, that we should cease from sin.” — J. W. 
Alexander: Faith, pp. 17-18. 

Death as a Destroyer. — It is appointed unto all men once to 
die. The strongest man has no elixir of eternal life wherewith 
to renew his youth amid the decays of age ; nor has the wealthi- 
est prince a price wherewith to bribe destruction. * * * 

Death is a subtle foe, lurking everywhere, even in the most 
harmless things. Who can tell where Death has not prepared 
his ambuscades'? He meets us both at home and abroad; at 
the table he assails men in their food, and at the fountain he 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


571 


poisons their drink. He waylayeth us in the streets, and he 
seizeth us in our beds ; he rideth on the storm at sea, and he 
walks with us when we are on our way upon the solid land. 
Whither can we fly to escape from thee, Oh Death, for from the 
summit of the Alps men have fallen to their graves, and in the 
deep places of the earth, where the miner goeth down to find 
the precious ore, there hast thou sacrificed many a hecatomb 
of precious lives. 

His Power Taken from Him by Christ.— Our living Eedeemer 
has so charged thee that thou art no longer death, but some- 
thing other than thy name. Saints die not now, but they are 
dissolved and depart. Death is the loosing of the cable, that 
the bark may freely sail to the fair havens. Death is the fiery 
chariot in which we ascend to God. it is the gentle voice of 
the great King, who cometh into His banquet hall, and saith, 
“ Friend, come up higher.” Yes, our Lord has abolished death. 
The sting of Death is sin, and our great Substitute has taken 
that sting away by his great Sacrifice. — Charles Spurgeon. 

Genius of Christianity is Love. — The genius of Christianity is 
love. Its tendency is peace on earth and good-will among men 
— and it will eventuate in glory to God and man in the highest 
heaven. It contemplates the reformation of the world upon a 
new principle. It aims at conquering men by love. And he is 
a superficial philosopher who cannot see that this is the only 
rational way to promote purity and happiness — for these are 
inseparable companions — Happy the pure in heart, for they shall 
see God. And no system which leaves man not in the posses- 
sion of a quiet conscience can bestow to him happiness. Love 
has a transfiguring or transforming efficacy upon the human 
mind. To impress the image of God upon the human 
heart, it is necessary that the love of God should be exhibited 
to the human mind. Men cannot be made to love by com- 
mands and threats — that would be most unphilosophic. If we 
would have men to love, we must present an amiable object. 
This is God’s method. To fill men with love to Him, He shows 
them that He loves them. They say, “ we love Him because He 
first loved us .” That system which promotes, or is calculated 
to promote, the greatest degree of love among men, is the 
most philosophic plan for purifying and reforming the 
world. This Mr. Owen’s system has lost sight of There is 
nothing in it to produce love. It wants an object, amiable and 


572 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


magnificent, to arouse reflection, admiration, and love in man. 
Eating and drinking and lodging in the same apartments, are 
all the stimulus he has to present to the human mind to 
promote love. And yet who does not know that the fastings, 
and watchings, and hardships, and dangers of a single cam- 
paign, or of a shipwreck, will produce more kind feelings and 
solicitude for the welfare of our companions, than the feasting 
together for years, at the same festive board, is capable of 
producing ? If men were to rack their ingenuity to eternity, 
to invent a scheme for promulging love and good-will among 
men, they could find nothing half comparable to the Christian 
scheme. It finds men hated and hating one another, full of 
bitterness and wrath, yet all in the same calamity. It teaches 
them that they are all shipwrecked, bankrupts, miserable, and 
wretched. It makes them feel this ; and then presents 
them with the love of God, sealed by the death of His Son. — 
A . Campbell : Evidences , p, 374. 

Love Abroad. — It was new as a historical fact. We talk of the 
apostolic mission as a matter of course ; we say that the 
apostles were ordered to go and plant churches, and so we 
dismiss the great fact. But we forget that the command was 
rather the result of a spirit working from within, than of an 
injunction working from without. That spirit was Love. 

And when that new spirit was in the world, see how 
straightway it created a new thing. Men before that had trav- 
eled into foreign countries: the naturalist, to collect speci : 
mens; the historian, to accumulate facts; the philosopher, to 
hive up wisdom, or else he had stayed in his cell or grove to 
paint pictures of beautiful love. But the spectacle of an 
Apostle Paul crossing oceans, not to conquer kingdoms, nor 
to hive up knowledge, but to impart life — not to accumulate 
stores for self, but to give, and to spend himself — was new in 
the history of the world. The celestial fire had touched the 
hearts of men, and their hearts flamed; and it caught, and 
spread, and would not stop. On they went, that glorious band 
of brothers, in their strange enterprise, over oceans, and 
through forests, penetrating into the dungeon, and to the 
throne ; to the hut of the savage feeding on human flesh, and 
to the shore lined with the skin-clad inhabitants of these far 
Isles of Britain. Read the account given by Tertullian of the 
marvelous rapidity with which the Christians increased and 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


573 


swarmed, and you are reminded of one of those vast armies of 
ants which move across a country in irresistible myriads, 
drowned by thousands in rivers, cut off by fire, consumed by 
man and beast, and yet fresh hordes succeeding interminably 
to supply their place. 

Anew voice was heard; a new yearning upon earth; man 
pining at being severed from his brother, and longing to burst 
the false distinctions which had kept the best hearts from each 
other so long ; an infant cry of life — the cry of the young Church 
of God. And all this from Judea, the narrowest, most bigoted, 
most intolerant nation on the face of the earth. — F. W. Robert- 
son : Vol. I pp, 274-5. 

Love, the Superior, is a Soul-force.— This love to Christ, as a 
great soul-force, accomplishes that which is indispensable to 
the whole ripening of the human soul — namely, whatever unites 
it in vital sympathy to God. The human soul, withput per- 
sonal union with God, is sunless and summerless, and can 
never blossom nor ripen. 

Art, instructed by science, may give us better light, and 
cheaper; it may drain cities of dangerous elements; it may 
build better tenements ; it may find better food ; it may give 
better clothing ; it may surround the bodily life with more 
comforts and material helps; but the soul lies further back 
than the skin ; and society is something more than the aggre- 
gate of happy animals. Society is tormented by the disposi- 
tions of men more than by its own ignorance. While science 
will enlighten men ; while art will augment their physical com- 
fort; while these will indirectly smooth the way for higher 
advancement, or prove auxilaries to it, they are not the prime 
elements of elevation. 

To bring this lower order in creation up to a divine union, so 
that it shall make the leap from the animat to the spiritual 
sphere, from the lower to the higher condition, is the one 
problem of history. It cannot be done by reason, although 
reason is largely subordinated, and is auxiliary. But the reason, 
dominant, can never bring the soul into vital union with God. 
Even if by searching it could find him, it would stop short in 
the finding. It would make no further acquaintance with him. 
So that Science, which is the child of reason, will never min- 
ister directly to this consummation, though indirectly it will, 
or will prepare the way for it, and will furnish various auxilia- 
ries to its instruments. 


574 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


[Neither can this be done by conscience. Conscience has 
power; but not the power to create sympathy. No man will 
be joined to God by conscience; contrariwise, men will, more 
likely, by mere conscience, which excites fear, be driven away 
from God. 

It cannot, either, be done by awe and reverence, which are 
adjuncts, but which, while they give toning and shadow to the 
higher feelings, give them no solar heat. They tend to lower and 
humble the soul ; not to inspire and elevate it. They have their 
place among other feelings. Neither have they found God, nor 
have they ever led a soul to find him — still less to join him. Love, 
as a disposition, as a constant mood, has a welding power 
which can bring the soul to God, and fix it there. Finding him, 
it can bring the soul into communion with him, so that there 
shall be a personal connection between the divine nature and 
the human nature. It is a power that belongs to every single 
individual soul in the race. There is no one who may not rise 
up into union with God by the power of love. That is the wing 
which will carry the soul safely through the wide distance ; and 
there is no other wing that can beat its way there. 

This is the doctrine which blazes throughout Christ’s teach- 
ings. It is the interpretation that he gave of the whole law, that 
it meant nothing but love — love to God and love to man. And 
that sublimest didactic psalm that was ever chanted through 
the ages — the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians — is to the 
same purport. Without love, every other grace and every other 
attainment is void. Love, then, is the one interpreter between 
God and man. 

Love, also, is the one facile harmonizer of the internal 
discords of the human soul. It induces an atmosphere in us in 
which all feelings find their summer, and so their ripeness. 
Around no other one centre of the human soul will all the 
faculties gather in submission and in obedience ; but they will 
around love. It has power to control rage and anger, and sub- 
due them. It breaks self-will and obstinacy. It persuades 
pride. It stimulates imagination, and enriches it. It gives 
energy to all the moral sentiments; ennobles them; sweetens 
them ; gives them more power. While it fires each individual 
power with intense fervor, it mingles the different manifesta- 
tions of power, like flames, in a harmonious fellowship. 


CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY. 


575 


Love it is — not conscience — that is God’s regent in the human 
soul, because it can govern the soul as nothing else can. 

Love is the only experience which keeps the soul always 
in a relation of sympathy and of harmony with one’s fellows ; 
and so it is the truest principle of society. If society ever rises 
out of its lower passions and entanglements into a pure and 
joyous condition, it will be by the inspiration of a divine love. 
This alone will enable it to convert knowledge to benefit. — 
Beecher : Vol, 2d , pp. 441-2. 


IMMORTALITY HD THE RESURRECTION. 


^pUZZLING Questions. — Modern philosophy is perplexed at this 
® whole question, which is sometimes fairly given up and 
handed over to the realm of faith. The perplexity should not 
be forgotten by us when we attempt to submit the Phsedo of 
Plato to the requirements of logic. For what idea can we 
form of the soul separated from the body? Or how can the 
soul be united with the body and still be independent? Is 
the soul related to the body as the ideal to the real, or as the 
whole to the parts, or as the subject to the object, or as the 
cause to the effect, or as the end to the means ? Shall we say, 
with Aristotle, that the soul is the entelechy or form of an 
organized living body ? Or with Plato, that she has a life of her 
own? Is the Pythagorean image of the harmony, or of the 
monad, the truer expression ? Is the soul related to the body 
as sight to the eye, or as the boatman to his boat ? (Arist. 
de Anim, ii : 1, 11, 12.) And in another state of being is the 
soul to be conceived of as vanishing into infinity, hardly 
possessing an existence which she can call her own, as in the 
pantheistic system of Spinoza and others ? Or as an individual 
spirit informed with another body and retaining the impress 
of her former character ? (Op. Gorgias, 524 B. C.) Or is 
the opposition of soul and body a mere illusion, and the true 
self neither soul nor body, but the union of the two in the 
“ I ” which is above them ? And is death the assertion of this 
individuality in the higher nature, and the falling away into 
nothingness of the lower? Or are we vainly attempting to 
pass the boundaries of human thought ? The body and soul 
seem to be inseparable, not only in fact, but in our conceptions 
of them ; and any philosophy which too closely unites them, or 
too widely separates them, either in this life or in any other, 
disturbs the balance of human nature. Neither Plato nor any 
other philosopher has perfectly adjusted them, or been per- 
fectly consistent with himself in describing the relation to one 
another .— -Professor Jowett : Plato , Vol. I, p. 372. 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 577 

The Early Philosophers In Douht.— The writings of Cicero rep- 
resent in the most lively colors the ignorance, the errors, and 
the uncertainty of the ancient philosophers with regard to the 
immortality of the soul. When they are desirous of arming 
their disciples against the fear of death, they inculcate, as an 
obvious, though melancholy position, that the fatal stroke of 
our dissolution releases us from the calamities of life ; and that 
those can no longer suffer who no longer exist. Yet there 
were a few sages of Greece and Rome who had conceived a 
more exalted, and, in some respects, a juster idea of human 
nature; though it must be confessed, that, in the sublime 
inquiry, their reason had been often guided by their imagina- 
tion, and that their imagination had been prompted by their 
vanity. When they viewed with complacency the extent of their 
own mental powers, when they exercised the various faculties 
of memory, of fancy and of judgment, in the most profound 
speculations, or the most important labors, and when they 
reflected on the desire of fame, which transported them into 
future ages, far beyond the bounds of death and of the grave ; 
they were unwilling to confound themselves with the beasts of 
the field, or to suppose, that a being, for whose dignity 
they entertained the most sincere admiration, could be 
limited to a spot of earth, and to a few years’ duration. 
With this favorable prepossession, they summoned to their aid 
the science, or rather the language, of Metaphysics. They soon 
discovered, that as none of the properties of matter will apply 
to the operations of the mind, the human soul must, conse- 
quently, be a substance distinct from the body, pure, simple and 
spiritual, incapable of dissolution, and susceptible of a much 
higher degree of virtue and happiness after the release from 
its corporeal prison. From these specious and noble princi- 
ples, the philosophers who trod in the footsteps of Plato 
deduced a very unjustifiable conclusion, since they asserted, 
not only the future immortality, but the past eternity of the 
soul, which they were too apt to consider as a portion of the 
infinite and self-existing spirit, which pervades and sustains the 
universe. A doctrine thus removed beyond the senses and the 
experience of mankind might serve to amuse the leisure of a 
philosophic mind ; or, in the silence of solitude, it might impart 
a ray of comfort to desponding virtue ; but the faint impression 
which had been received in the schools, was soon obliterated 
Ki: 


578 IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 

by the commerce and business of active life. * * * Since, 
therefore, the most sublime efforts of philosophy can extend 
no farther than feebly to point out the desire, the hope, or, at 
most, the probability of a future state, there is nothing, except 
a divine revelation, that can ascertain the existence and 
describe the condition of the invisible country which is destined 
to receive the souls of men after their separation from the 
body . — Gibbon : Decline and Fall , Chap. XV. 

They Are Christian Ideas. — The immortality of the soul, the 
second coming of Christ, and the final judgment of the world, 
form together a group of doctrines the relation of which to 
moral practice is too deeply felt to require much discussion in 
this place. Perhaps, however, everybody does not sufficiently 
consider how peculiarly Christian these doctrines are, and how 
the belief in them, and the moral issues of such belief must 
necessarily stand and fall with the faith in some such historical 
religion as has hitherto formed the framework of the Churches 
of Christendom. For however these doctrines might be dimly 
conceived and vaguely believed by the people who wrote D. M. 
upon their tombstones, and however solemnly imagined and 
grandly depicted they were in the eloquent discourses of the 
great philosophers of Idealism, there are few mistakes greater 
than to accept these dim conceptions and grand imaginings as 
a proof that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, as a 
point of polytheistic faith, performed the same function in 
molding the morality of the ancient Greeks and Romans that 
it does at the present day among modern Christian peoples. 
#####*#*###• 

A Dim Imagination, Rather than a Definite Comiction. — That 
belief, indeed, was held so loosely by the mass of the Greek 
people that it may rather be described as a dim imagination 
than as a definite conviction. People were rather unwilling to 
believe that their beloved human friends had vanished into the 
realm of nothingness than convinced that they had gone to 
where on any account it would be at all desirable to go. 
* * * * A n cl as for the philosophers, it was Socrates only 
and Plato who in their teaching gave any special emphasis 
to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; and no man 
who has read the most familiar accounts of the defence which 
the former delivered to the jury at his trial, or of his last 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


579 


moments as reported by Plato in tbe Phcedo, can have carried 
off the impression that the great father of moral philosophy 
taught that doctrine with any dogmatic decision or certainty. 
We must say, therefore, with Dr. Paley, that it was the gospel 
and the gospel alone, which “brought life and immortality to 
light,” and with it introduced whatever real power in elevating 
or strengthening the moral nature of man such a doctrine,, 
when held as a habitual conviction, must exercise over the 
masses of men. What Socrates contemplated calmly as a. 
probable contingency, St. Paul and the early Christians gloried 
in as a grand culmination and a triumphant result. And the 
effective influence of this firm faith on society has been to give 
an infinitely greater dignity to human, life, to increase infinitely 
the moral worth of the individual, and to add a support of 
wonderful efficacy to those states and stages of toilsome exist- 
ence which stand so much in need of such hopeful consola- 
tion . — Prof . John Stuart Blackie : Four Phases of Morals, pp. 
219 - 223 . 

Personality — What Is It ? — If, then, pure reason cannot sug- 
gest any arguments to establish the personality of the soul 
when finally separated from the body, and for us personality is 
only another name for existence, still less can it show any 
grounds for supposing that it possesses in itself the power 
of assuming at death another organization corresponding to 
our present body, whereby its personality may be preserved. 
Our present body is not in any way, as far as we can see, due 
primarily to the action of the soul, which acts through and 
upon it ; and when the body is dissolved, the only action of the 
soul of which we can have naturally any knowledge ceases. 
It may have some inherent energy, in virtue of which it manifests 
itself throughout the ages, now in this form, now in that. It 
may, but that seems harder to conceive, have gained on earth 
the means of realizing a personal existence hereafter. It may, 
as many thought, even among God’s ancient people, go back to 
Him who gave it and continue to exist only as part of His In- 
finite Being. Our utter incapacity of forming a clear concep- 
tion of any mode of existence differing in essence from our 
own, and not simply in extent of similar powers, forces us to 
contemplate these and other alternatives, and to withhold our 
judgment till we gain some new light. If we look within or 
without, we have absolutely no analogy to carry our thoughts 


580 IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 

one step onward into a realm wholly unknown ; none to show 
that the soul will exert a power there which has been unde- 
veloped or dormant here. Every change which we can follow 
is simply of the earth. Faith, or love, or instinct, may cross the 
dark river, but they go alone ; reason cannot follow them. 
Nay, more : reason shows that the visions which they see 
are mere shadowy projections of what we see and feel now. 

A Final Contradiction. — Thus we are placed before a final con- 
tradiction. On the one side, instinct clings to the belief in the 
continuance of our personality after death ; on the other, reason 
points to death as a phenomenon absolutely singular, which 
closes life, as far as we know it, and takes away the condi- 
tions of our life. But if a single experience can show that 
these conditions are not destroyed, but suspended as far as 
we observe them, or modified by the action of some new 
law; that what seems to be a dissolution is really a trans- 
formation; that the soul does not remain alone in a future 
state, but is still united with our body, that is with an or- 
ganism which in a new sphere expresses the law which our 
present body now expresses in this ; then reason will welcome 
the belief in our future personality no less than instinct. For 
the truth is not against reason, but beyond it. Beason shows 
simply that what we commonly see, and what we can learn from 
the analysis of our own nature lends no support to the conclu- 
sion which we cannot abandon. But let some new fact come 
in, and all will be changed, if that reveals to us something of 
the character of life after death. 

Such a fact is the Resurrection. In one sense no event can 
be more natural than this, so far as it answers to a craving for 
knowledge of the unseen world, which by its intensity indicates 
that it was intended to be satisfied, as much as any other orig- 
inal instinct of man. In another sense nothing can be more 
beyond nature, for it introduces us to a novel phase of being, 
of which we feel even in the presence of this revelation that 
we can know only a part darkly. 

Several Things the Resurrection is Unlike.— For the Resurrec- 
tion is not like any one of the recorded miracles of raising the 
dead. It is not a restoration to the old life, to its wants, to its 
special limitations, to its inevitable close, but the revelation of 
a new life foreshadowing new powers of action and a new 
mode of being. It issues not in death but in the Ascension for 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


581 


which it is the preparation and the condition. It is not an 
extension of an existence with which we are acquainted, but 
the manifestation of an existence for which we hope. It is 
not like any of the fabled apotheoses of the friends of gods, whose 
spirits purified by the funeral fire from the stains of earth, 
were carried to the immediate presence of those whom they 
had loved, but it is the consecration of a restored and 
perfected manhood. It is not a withdrawal from men or 
a laying aside of humanity, complete, final, and immediate, but 
the pledge of an abiding communion of a Savior with the 
fulness of our nature on earth and in heaven. It is not the 
putting off of the body, but the transfiguration of it. And so 
in its record it is not like any of the dreams in which 
earlier poets had endeavored to convey to others the hope 
which they cherished. <£ts teaching is conveyed in a series of 
facts. Now one incident and now another brings out some 
aspect of the whole truth, as far as we can apprehend it. But 
all incidents alike are simple and in a certain sense natural. No 
vision is opened of glory or suffering. No display is made of 
fresh powers. No overpowering exhibition of majesty strikes 
unwilling conviction into the hearts of those who were before 
unbelieving. The Lord rose from the grave ; and those who 
had known Him before, knew that He was the same and yet 
changed. This is the sum of the Apostle’s testimony, the new 
Gospel of the world.— B. F. Westcott : Gospel of the Resurrec- 
tion , pp. 154-8. 

Belief in a Bodily Resurrection of Our Lord.— The belief of the 
disciples in the bodily resurrection of our Lord is confessed by 
the critical school; and this fact cannot be explained as the 
result of a mere vision. If we picture to ourselves the con- 
dition and consciousness of the disciples at that time, we must 
first ask, how — unless their Master actually issued forth from 
the grave — could the idea of the resurrection occur to them ? 
They believed, we are told, in the Messiahship of Christ, and 
in His victorious existence after death. But why should this 
belief take the shape of a r factso utterly unheard of, as that He 
should shortly come forth again from the grave? It has been 
shown that at that time the belief in the resurrection of the 
dead at the last judgment was current among the Jews; but 
the notion of the resurrection of a dead man, who leaves his 
grave in a body already transformed long before the judgment- 


582 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


day, was as little thought of by the contemporaries of Christ 
(see John xi: 24) as by any of the Old Testament writers. 
This idea was so foreign to the disciples, as well as to the J ew- 
ish world in general, that had they had visions of Christ, their 
only conclusion could have been that His soul was living in 
heavenly glory ; but never that the Master who had died before 
their eyes had gone forth from the grave again alive. Their 
belief in the resurrection was, to all intents and purposes, quite 
a new belief. “The Messianic expectations of the Jews con- 
tained no idea corresponding to it.” (Weizsacker : p. 574.) But 
since it is undeniable that from their first public appearance 
the apostles preached of their Lord, who had not only been 
received? up into heaven, but who had also risen again in body, 
we ask, how was this new element introduced into their view 
of the Messiah, unless a fact of theii* indubitable experience 
convinced them of it ? Strauss confesses that the Pharisees be- 
lieved only in a resurrection at the last day, but adds, “There was 
no difficulty, from the standpoint of Jewish thought at that time, 
in supposing that the resurrection of some particularly holy 
man might take place earlier in an isolated instance.” The 
artifice of supposing an exception in this one case will not help 
Strauss to get over this inconvenient difficulty. 

The Notion of a Glorified Body. — Moreover, we ask, whence 
did the disciples obtain the notion of a glorified body ? On 
other occasions when the dead were raised, something quite 
different took place, viz : a return to the present mortal body, 
but not a transformation of this mortal flesh into a glorified 
body. Besides, our critics maintain that these raisings of the 
dead were myths or deceptions, and therefore cannot have 
been the source of this belief. The same is the case with the 
history of our Lord’s transfiguration, which Strauss derives 
from the opinion of the Jewish Christians, that Moses was a 
type of Christ. “The belief in the rapture and heavenly life 
of Enoch, Elijah, or Moses, was rather a hindrance than other- 
wise to the application of such notions to a man of the present 
age, especially one who had been seen to die.” (Weizsacker.) 
Whence, then, could the idea of a glorified body, with these 
apparently irreconcilable attributes of sudden disappearance 
and palpableness, proceed? * * * * Some upholders of 

the “ visionary ” hypothesis, without giving up the subjective 
character of these appearances, are willing to grant that 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 583 

influences without or from above — “a personal working of 
the departed spirit of Christ upon His disciples” — may have 
helped to produce them. Is this any more conceivable than 
an appearance of the risen Savior Himself? Or is a vision thus 
magically produced within the disciples more comprehensible 
than the resurrection ? Are not words and sounds (if they do 
not proceed from an illusion) without an actual appearance, 
more marvelous than the appearance itself? Do such explana- 
tions carry us a step beyond the miraculous ? They are but 
one more proof of Rothe’s maxim, that “ without miracles the 
divine revelation must infallibly degenerate into magic.” 

Passionate Imagination at Work.— Our opponents are com- 
pelled further to suppose that the passionate imagination of 
the disciples stretched out its feelers after their indispensable 
Master. Instead of this, we see that on each occasion He 
appears to His followers quite unexpectedly; so much so, that 
at first they will not believe and He has to rebuke their unbe- 
lief. From this it is clear that they were not prepared for the 
immediate reappearance of Jesus, especially in the shape of a 
resurrection from the dead. Here the psychological precondi- 
tion of visions is wanting. The deep dejection on account of 
their Master’s shameful death could scarcely give wings to a 
new and joyous faith. We see the poor shepherdless sheep in 
fear of the Jews, in doubts and conflicts respecting their 
Messianic hopes, in perplexity as to the future. These are 
not the frames of mind from which ecstatic visions might be 
expected to proceed, but rather the contrary. For in other 
parts of the New Testament we see visions come upon those 
who are seeking for a deeper knowledge of God by means of 
tranquil contemplation, still communion, firm faith, and earnest 
prayer and fasting. 

Mental and Physical Impossibility of “Visions.” — And finally, 
the montal and physical impossibility of visions by so many 
people at once . Critics may talk of a chain of spiritual sympa- 
thy which can bind down whole assemblies at once. But in the 
New Testament, visions presuppose a certain moral and 
religious effort and frame of mind in the individual who has 
them, and cannot be shown to be “infectious.” In this case, 
too, there would always be one who began and drew the others 
after him; whereas, on various appearances of our Lord, many, 
ay hundreds, at once and simultaneously perceived Him. We 


584 IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 

do not deny that science can tell us of cases in which visions 
were seen by whole assemblies at once ; but where this is the 
case it has always been accompanied by a morbid excitement 
of the mental life, as well as by a morbid bodily condition, 
especially by nervous affections. Now, even if one or several 
of the disciples had been in this morbid state, we should by no 
means be justified in concluding that all were so. They were 
surely men of most varied temperament and constitution. And 
yet one after another is supposed to have fallen into this 
morbid condition; not only the excited woman, but even Peter, 
that strong and hardy fisherman who was assuredly as far from 
nervousness as any one — James — the two on their way to 
Emmaus, and so on down to the sober and doubting Thomas — 
ay, all eleven at once, and even more than five hundred breth- 
ren together. All of these are supposed suddenly to have 
fallen into the same self-deception, and that, be it remarked, at 
the most different times and places, and during the most varied 
occupations (mourning by the grave, in conversation by the 
wayside, in the confidential circle of friends, at work on the 
lake), in which their frames of mind must assuredly have been 
varied, and their internal tendency to visions most uneven. 
This latter point especially is important in considering the 
psychological possibility of such simultaneous visions. 

No Self-deception. — And could they all of them have agreed to 
announce these visions to the world as bodily appearances of 
the risen Christ ? Or had they done so, could it have been pure 
self-deception and not intentional deceit? Surely, some one or 
other of them must afterwards seriously have asked himself 
whether the image that he had seen was a reality. Sehleier 7 
macher says, most truly, “Whoever supposes that the disciples 
deceived themselves and mistook the internal for the external, 
accuses them of such mental weakness as must invalidate their 
entire testimony concerning Christ, and make it appear as 
though Christ Himself, when He chose such witnesses, did not 
know what was in man. Or if He Himself had willed and 
ordained that they should mistake inward appearances for 
outward perceptions, He would have been the author of error, 
and all moral ideas would be confounded if this were compatible 
with His high dignity.” 

Difference in Nature of New Testament Visions.— Here we must 
again refer to the great distinction between the appearances of 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


585 


the risen Savior and the real visions related in the New Testa- 
ment. How entirely different was the vision of dying Stephen, 
who saw Jesns in heaven and not upon earth! How different 
the vision of Peter who was “in a trance” (Acts x: 10), and did 
not see Jesus at all! How different the ecstatic condition in 
which the early Christians spoke in different tongues but did 
not see anything ! How different, as we saw, the visionary trance 
of Paul (2 Cor., 12.) The u visions of the Lord” mentioned are 
not “ brought into any connection whatever with appearances 
of the risen Christ” (Keim), either by Paul or by his opponents. 
If, then, the New Testament writers well know what visions 
and ecstatic conditions are, why do they always depict the 
appearances of Christ quite differently? Why do they never say 
of the disciples, to whom these were* vouchsafed, that they “fell 
into a trance ?” Clearly, because the early Church considered 
those appearances as distinct and separate from the later 
visions. 

Visionary Hypothesis Tested.— Hence it is not possible to 
assume that those later visions were a continuation of the first 
appearances of Christ. But if the latter soon ceased, a new 
difficulty arises for the visionary hypothesis (see Keim, p. 136). 
Why should these visions of Christ have lasted only for a few 
weeks and no longer ? “ If the vision passed like electric shocks 
through rank and file, through the twelve and the five hundred ; 
if they continued day by day and week by week ; then psycho- 
logical science would teach us to expect an uninterrupted com- 
munication of these impulses, — a continuous intensification of 
mutual infection in the great vibrating body, — an indolent life 
of visionary self-gratification in imaginary intercourse with the 
indispensable Master ; but not a diminution, stoppage, and tran- 
sition to healthy energy.” The enigma would remain to be 
solved, how the Church could so quickly sober down from her 
visionary condition ; since thus much at least is certain, that 
she by no means boasted herself of continued appearances of 
her risen Lord. 

From all this we see how little the belief of the disciples in 
the resurrection can be explained by means of visions, and how 
little likelihood, or even possibility there is, psychologically 
speaking, in their case for the development of visionary condi- 
tions of mind or body. ******* 

But if Jerusalem became the cradle of belief in the resurrec- 


586 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


tion so soon after the death of Christ, what would have been 
easier for the enemies, when this was announced as a fact to 
the people than to confute the apostles by exhuming the corpse 
of their Master ? 

Schenkel and Strauss Examined.— This is another great difficulty 
which lies in the way of our opponents : What became of the 
body of Jesus? The visionary hypothesis cannot explain the 
fact of the empty grave, which even Schenkel acknowledges 
as undeniable. Strauss is of opinion that when, at the feast 
of Pentecost, Christ was announced as having risen, neither 
His followers nor the Jews probably knew any longer which 
was the place of his burial, nor would they, on account of their 
horror of corpses, feel inclined to search after the body. “ J esus 
had perhaps been hastily interred, along with others who had 
suffered capital punishment, in some dishonorable spot ; and 
when the apostles after a considerable time appeared with the 
announcement that He had risen, it must have been dif- 
ficult for their opponents to produce His corpse in a condition 
recognizable enough to afford proofs against them.” (p. 312.) 
If the resurrection, we answer, had been only a vision- 
ary deception, the evangelists would certainly have been 
obliged to take care that Jesus should appear to have been 
buried in some unknown spot, in order that a search should be 
difficult. But what do they relate? That Jesus was openly 
and honorably buried in a place quite near to Golgotha, well- 
known not only to the disciples, but to the Jewish councillors 
and the Boman magistrates ; and even that the Sanhedrim had 
the grave sealed, and put a watch before it, so that the burial- 
place of “the King of the Jews” must doubtless have been 
known throughout the town. Shall we then, it has been well 
said, suppose that none of Christ’s followers, not even the 
possessor of the garden was so distrustful or curious as to go 
to look at the grave himself, when the women told of the 
appearance of Jesus? Shall we imagine that no one out of 
the great number of His enemies was prudent enough to 
examine the tomb, and have the corpse, which assuredly would 
have still been in some degree recognizable even after weeks ? 
brought out, since it must have been of the utmost importance 
to them openly to convict Christ’s followers of a falsehood*, 
while, as regards their horror of corpses, there were doubtless 
enough Gentile menials in Jerusalem whom they could have 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 587 

employed. Instead of this, we are told that they preferred to 
confess the fact of the grave being found empty, in order to 
saddle the disciples with the accusation of stealing the corpse! 
The “ criticism ” which can make such statements as these, 
itself needs criticising very much. 

An Evasion of the Resurrection Fact. — Others have thought to 
evade the question by supposing that some unknown adorer of 
Christ took away the corpse without the knowledge of the 
apostles — thus basing this world-wide and world-ruling belief 
on an accident or a fraud ! Are not such fancies as these signs 
that our critics are in despair ; that, in the consciousness of 
having exhausted all their sagacity in textual criticism, in psy- 
chology, and philosophy, in the vain attempt to overturn the 
rock of our Christian faith, they are now reduced to substitut- 
ing the windiest hypotheses for the historical testimonies which 
they reject? The empty, open tomb, with its loud question: 
Where is His body ? puts all their attempts to shame. 

The Effect the Fact Had on the World. — Add to all these grounds 
for the reality of our Lord’s resurrection the last and weighti- 
est, viz : the immeasurable effect exercised by this belief on 
the disciples and on the world. Take, first of all, the sudden 
revolution in the frame of mind and in the behavior of the 
disciples, which can no more be explained as the result of 
visions in their case than in that of Paul’s. Before the resur- 
rection we see the disciples so fearful ; they scatter when the 
Master is bound ; the most courageous of them denies his Lord 
before a servant-girl ; only secretly do they dare to meet, with 
“doors shut, for fear of the Jews”— and afterwards, though 
holding their lives in their hands, they step forward so fear- 
lessly before the whole nation, before the judges and murder- 
ers of their Master, and preach His resurrection with a 
joyousness that cannot be intimidated by any threats or ill- 
usage. Beforehand, they are so shaken and broken down by 
the sudden death of their Messiah, that their hope in Him, as 
the Redeemer of Israel, is vanished, their own future and that 
of their faith enveloped in impenetrable darkness; and sud- 
denly a light of hope is kindled in them which even the most 
violent storm of persecution cannot extinguish. All at once 
they are clearly conscious of their vocation; an intrepid, joy- 
ous faith, a holy zeal, a consciousness of victory, fills their 
hearts, and impels them to go to Jews and Gentiles to conquer 


588 IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 

the world for their Master, and upholds and comforts them in 
tribulation and death. 

The New Faith Finds an Entrance Everywhere.— And this new faith 
finds an entrance everywhere ; only becomes stronger and more 
firmly rooted through opposition and persecution ; can be 
damped by no power, either of the sword, or of science ; in a 
stupendous revolution it conquers the world, and regenerates 
it morally and spiritually; it embodies itself in a living and 
growing Church, which has penetrated to all nations, and 
already lasted for eighteen centuries. Are we, then, to believe 
that the impulse to these immeasurable effects proceeded from 
visions and nervous convulsions ; from the visionary or epilep- 
tic constitution of hysterical women and weak-nerved men ; 
that the disciples derived the clear knowledge of their exten- 
sive task from a fleeting vision ; that the light of the Christian 
Church, the sobriety and truth of its spirit, and the earnestness 
of its moral energy, came from over-excited nerves ; ay, that 
the moral regeneration of the world proceeding therefrom had 
its origin in error and self-deception. 

What are We to Believe] — Are we to believe that the great 
fact which has afforded a sufficient explanation of the history 
of the Church and the development of the world up to this pres- 
ent moment, in the end dwindles down to the phantoms of a 
diseased imagination, or the passion of the hallucinated? 
Believe that who will ; call it what you please, only not rational 
or natural; and be sure that it will never stand before the 
judgment-seat of history or of conscience! No! the enormous 
weight of these historical effects produced by the belief in the 
resurrection, must crush every effort to derive it from anything 
but the fact that Jesus Christ, the great Redeemer of the world, 
actually did burst the bonds of death by rising on that Easter 
morning ! — Theodore Christlieb: Modern Doubt and Christian 
Belief, pp. 490-9. 

The Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus Presented by Horne. 

The chief priests and Pharisees, who had so long and so 
anxiously been plotting the destruction of Christ, would take 
care that he was really void of life before the body was taken 
down. His friends would never have wound it round so closely 
with linen cloth, as was the custom in Judea, if there had been 
any remains of life. Even if they could be supposed to be mis- 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 589 

taken ; yet, lying in a cold sepulchre, unable to stir from before 
six o’clock on Friday afternoon, till the dawn of the first day of 
the week, the body must have been truly dead. The fact was 
well known, and universally acknowledged. The friends and 
companions of Jesus asserted it before his powerful enemies, 
in the most public manner, only fifty days after, and even they 
did not deny it. Nay, the Jews, by being offended at his cruci- 
fixion and death, gave their attestation to the facts. The very 
anxiety of the chief priests and Pharisees to prevent the removal 
of the body of Jesus, undesignedly drew from them a clear proof 
that they themselves were convinced of his actual decease. 
While his body was in the sepulchre, “they said to Pilate, Sir, 
we remember that that deceiver said : while he was yet alive, 
After three days I will rise again.” This implies their full per- 
suasion that he was really not alive when they spake the words. 
Their asking for a guard to prevent the disciples from stealing 
the corpse, and from deceiving the people, by pretending that 
he was risen from the dead , does also involve their being con- 
vinced that he was then truly dead. 

Farther, upon the same grounds that we believe ancient history 
in general, there can be no reason for doubting, but that the 
body of Jesus was deposited on the evening of the day on 
which it was taken from the cross, in a private sepulchre of 
Joseph of Arimathea, hewn out of a rock, in which no corpse 
had ever been laid before. Nor is there any ground for doubt- 
ing, but that a great stone was rolled to the mouth of the sep- 
ulchre ; that this stone was sealed by the chief priests and 
Pharisees, who would of course first see that the body was 
there, else this precaution would have been useless; and that 
at their request a guard of Eoman soldiers, as large as they 
chose, was placed before the sepulchre, to prevent the corpse 
from being removed. Notwithstanding these precautions, how- 
ever, early on the morning of the first day of the week follow- 
ing, the body was missing, and neither the soldiers, who were 
upon guard, nor the chief priests, nor the Pharisees, could ever 
produce it. Yet none of the watch deserted their post while it 
was in the sepulchre, nor was any force used against the sol- 
diers, nor any arts of persuasion employed, to induce them to 
take it away, or to permit any other person to remove it. 

The question then is, How came it to be removed f Matthew 
has recorded the account which both the friends and the enemies 


590 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


of Jesus, and the disinterested heathen military guard, give of 
this. Let us examine these, that we may see which best 
deserves our credit. 

A Summary of the Testimony.— Early on the first day of the 
week some of the watch came into the city, and showed unto 
the chief priests all the things that were done; namely, the 
earthquake, the angel rolling back the stone from the door of 
the sepulchre, etc. The chief priests applied to Pilate, the 
Eoman governor, for a watch to secure the sepulchre, lest his 
disciples should steal him away ; and they sealed the stone 
(probably with the governor’s seal) to prevent the soldiers 
from being corrupted, so as to permit the theft. By this guard 
of sixty Eoman soldiers was the sepulchre watched; and, not- 
withstanding all the precautions thus carefully taken, the body 
was missing early on the morning of the first day of the 
following week. In this great fact both the Jewish council 
and the apostles perfectly agree ; this cannot be questioned. 
The council would otherwise have certainly produced it, and 
thus detected the falsehood of the apostles’ declaration, that 
Christ was risen from the dead, and prevented it from gaining 
credit among the Jews. On the resurrection of Christ, some 
of the soldiers went and related it to the chief priests, who 
bribed them largely, promising to secure their persons from 
danger, in case the governor should hear of their taking the 
money, and charged them to affirm that Christ’s disciples stole 
his body away while they were sleeping. So they took the 
money , and did as they ivere taught ; and this saying , or report, 
Matthew adds, is commonly reported among theJeics to this day . 
This flight of the soldiers, their declaration to the high priests 
and elders, the subsequent conduct of the latter, the detection 
and publication by the apostles of their collusion with the 
soldiers, and the silence of the Jews on that subject, who never 
attempted to refute or to contradict the declarations of the 
apostles, are all strong evidences of the reality and truth of 
his resurrection. Had the report, that his disciples stole the 
body, been true, Matthew would not have dared to have pub- 
lished in Judea, so soon after the event as he did (when many 
persons who had been spectators of the crucifixion and death 
of Christ must have been alive, and who would unquestionably 
have contradicted him if he had asserted a falsehood), that the 
chief priests bribed the soldiers to propagate it; as this would 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION, 


591 


have exposed himself to their indignation and to punishment, 
which they would the more willingly have inflicted, because he 
had been in the odious office of a Roman tax-gatherer, which he 
resigned to follow Jesus. The story of stealing the body 
appears from this account to have been so evidently false, that 
Matthew, though he faithfully records the report, does not say 
a syllable to refute it. He leaves the falsity of it to be mani- 
fested by well-known facts. Had the disciples really stolen 
the body, and invented the account of the resurrection of their 
Master, they never would have represented themselves as 
giving up all hopes of his rising again when he was dead, and 
as being backward to believe in his resurrection after they 
said it took place. (John xx: 9,10.) Nor would they, in the 
same memoirs, have described the chief priests as manifesting 
their fears and apprehensions that it possibly might come to 
pass, by the extraordinary guard they provided to prevent any 
deception. If this theft had been perpetrated, the partners in 
the fraud would never have dwelt so much as they have done 
upon the women going more than once to the sepulchre, to 
look for the body. There would have been no time to have 
taken off the bandages, nor to have wrapped up the napkin, 
and to have laid it in a place by itself, separate from the other 
linen, (v. 6, 7.) These circumstances, therefore, would never 
have formed a part of the narrative. Nor would it have been 
recorded of Mary, that she said to Peter and John, They have 
TAKEN AWAY the Lord out of the sepulchre 3 and we Tcnow not 
where they have laid him . (John xx: 2.) A few additional con- 
siderations will suffice to show the falsehood of the assertion 
made by the chief priests. 

Things to be Considered.— 1. On the one hand, consider the 
terror of the timid disciples and the paucity of their number. 
They knew that a Roman guard was placed at the sepulcre. 
They themselves were few, friendless, and discouraged, in 
hourly expectation of being arrested and put to death as follow- 
ers of Christ, and voluntarily confined themselves to a solitary 
chamber, for fear of being either crucified or stoned. On the 
other hand, contrast the authority of Pilate and of the sanhe- 
drim or council, the great danger attending such an enterprise 
as the stealing of Christ’s body, and the moral impossibility of 
succeeding in such an attempt. For the season was that of the 
great annual festival, the passover, when the city of J erusalem 


592 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


was full — on such occasions containing more than a million of 
people, many of whom probably passed the whole night (as Jesus 
and his disciples had done) in the open air. It was the time of 
the full moon; the night, consequently, was very light. The 
sepulchre , too, w?s just without the wallj of the city, and there- 
fore was exposed to continual inspection. All these circum- 
stances combine to render such a falsehood as that which was 
imposed upon the Jews utterly unworthy of credit. For, in 
the first place, how could a body of men, who had just before 
fled from a similar guard, notwithstanding their Master was 
present with them, venture to attack a band of sixty armed 
soldiers, for the purpose of removing the body of Christ from 
the sepulchre? How, especially, could they make this attempt, 
when they had nothing to gain, and when they must become 
guilty of rebelling against the Roman government — and, if they 
escaped death from the hands of the soldiers, were exposed to 
this evil in a much more terrible form ? 

2. Is it probable that so many men, as composed the guard, 
would all fall asleep in the open air at once f 

3. Since Pilate permitted the chief priests and Pharisees to 
make the sepulchre as sure as they could (Matt, xxvii: 65), they 
would certainly make it completely so. Roman soldiers were 
used to watch. Death was the punishment for sleeping on 
guard. This watch was for only about three or four hours, and 
early in the morning, so that they might have slept before. 
Can it be supposed, then, that they were all asleep together ? 
What could a few poor fishermen do against a well-disciplined 
and well-armed military force ? 

4. Could they be so soundly asleep, as not to awake with all 
the noise which must necessarily be made by removing the great 
stone from the mouth of the sepulchre, and taking away the 
body ? 

5. Are the appearances of composure and regularity found in 
the empty tomb at all suitable with the hurry and trepidation of 
thieves, when an armed guard, too, is at hand, stealing in a 
moonlight night ? 

6. Is it at all likely that the timid disciples could have suf- 
ficient time to do all this, without being perceived by any 
person? How could soldiers, armed and on guard, suffer 
themselves to be overreached by a few timorous people? 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


593 


Either Awake or Asleep. — 7. Either the soldiers were awake or 
asleep ; if they were awake, why should they suffer the body to 
be taken away? If asleep, how did they know, or how could 
they know, that the disciples of Christ had taken it away ? Why 
did not the sanhedrim, for their own honor, and the respect 
they bare to the truth, put all those soldiers to the question ? 
And if that thought did not at first suggest itself to them, is it 
not natural to think that they would have done it, when soon 
after they found all Jerusalem inclined to believe in that cruci- 
fied man; and that about six thousand persons had already 
believed in him in one day, and that only fifty days after his 
death? Doubtless the soldiers who watched the sepulchre 
were still at Jerusalem, and the sanhedrim retained the same 
power and authority which they had before. It highly concerned 
them to punish the negligence of those soldiers, or make them 
confess the secret of their perfidy, and who it was that suborned 
them, both to justify their own procedure, and also to prevent 
the total defection from Judaism of the great number of persons 
who had already joined the disciples of that pretented impostor. 
But this is not all. When on the day of Pentecost, that is, fifty 
days after the death of Jesus Christ, the apostles showed them- 
selves in the city of Jerusalem, and there testified that they had 
seen him risen from the dead, and that, after he had repeatedly 
appeared to them and ascended into heaven, he had poured 
out upon them the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, — why 
did not the sanhedrim (who were so highly concerned to dis- 
cover the persons who had taken away Christ’s body) apprehend 
the apostles, and make them confess how all things had hap- 
pened ? Why did they not confront them with the watch ? Why 
did they not imprison Joseph of Arimathea, and those men, till 
they had made them confess what was become of that body, as 
also every other circumstance of their imposture ? 

How unlikely is it, that, if the disciples had come by night 
and had stolen away the body of Christ, they durst have showed 
themselves, and appeared in public, nay, immediately confessed 
that they were his disciples ? It is much more credible that they 
would have hidden themselves after such an action, and that if 
they preached at all, it would have been to people more remote, 
and not in Jerusalem, the very place where those events had 
happened, nor in the presence of that very sanhedrim, of whom 
they were so much afraid, and whom they had so much offended. 

Ll 


o94 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


Why Did Not the Sanhedrim Act 1 — 8. Once more, Why did not 
the sanhedrim have recourse to the methods ordinarily employed 
to discover criminals ? They were very ready by menaces, tor- 
ments, and persecutions, to oblige the apostles not to preach 
in the name of Jesus Christ; but they never accused them of 
having stolen the body of their Master while the watch slept. 
On that investigation they durst not enter, because they well 
knew wha^» the soldiers had told them, and it was that very 
thing which made them so apprehensive. If there had been any 
suspicion that his disciples were in possession of the dead body, 
these rulers, for their own credit, would have imprisoned them, 
and used means to recover it, which would have quashed the 
report of his resurrection forever. 

In the fourth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we are in- 
formed that the sanhedrim caused the apostles to be brought 
before them for preaching, in the name of Christ, the doctrines 
of Christianity ; and for affirming, that Christ was risen from 
the dead. Had they believed that the apostles stole away the 
body of Christ , they would now certainly have charged them 
with this gross fraud, this direct rebellion against the Roman 
and Jewish governments; and unless they could have cleared 
themselves of the crime, would have punished them for it with, 
at least, due severity. Such punishment would not only have 
been just; but it had now become necessary for the sanhedrim 
to inflict it, in order to save their own reputation. They had 
originated the story ; and were now under the strongest induce- 
ments to support it. Yet they did not even mention the subject ; 
but contented themselves with commanding them to preach no 
more in the name of Christ. 

In the following chapter, we are told, that the whole body of 
the apostles was brought before them again, for continuing to 
preach, in opposition to this command. On this occasion, also, 
they maintained a profound silence concerning the theft, which 
they had originally attributed to the apostles ; but charged them 
with disobedience to their former injunctions. In this charge 
are contained the following remarkable words: Bid we not 
straitly command you , that ye should not teach in this name ? and 
behold , ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to 
bring this man’s blood upon us. (Acts v : 28.) To bring the blood of 
one person upon another is a phrase of frequent occurrence in 
the Bible. In fifteen different instances, in which we find it 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


595 


there, it lias but a single meaning, viz : to bring the guilt of con- 
tributing to the death of a person, or the guilt of murder, upon 
another person. When it is said, Sis blood shall be upon his own 
head, it is clearly intended, that the guilt of his death shall be 
upon himself. When, therefore, the sanhedrim accuse the 
apostles of attempting to bring the blood of Christ upon them , 
they accuse them of an intention to bring upon them the guilt 
of shedding his blood: this being the only meaning of such 
phraseology in the Scriptures. 

Should any doubt remain in the mind of any man concerning 
this interpretation, it may be settled, beyond all question, by 
recurring to the following passage : In Matthew xxvii: 24, 25, 
we are told, that when Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing 
towards releasing Christ, he took water, and washed his hands 
before the multitude, saying, 1 am innocent of the blood of, this 
just person ; see ye to it : and that then all the people answered, 
and said, Sis blood be on us, and on our children. The meaning 
of the phraseology in this passage cannot be mistaken ; and it 
is altogether probable, that the declaration of the sanhedrim 
being made so soon after this imprecation to the apostles, so 
deeply interested in the subject, and on an occasion which so 
naturally called it up to view, the sanhedrim referred to it 
directly. 

An Impostor or a Risen Lord. — But if Christ was not raised 
from the dead, he was a false prophet, an impostor, and, of 
course, a blasphemer; because he asserted himself to be the 
Messiah, the Son of God. Such a blasphemer the law of God 
condemned to death. The sanhedrim were the very persons 
to whom the business of trying and condemning him was com- 
mitted by that law, and whose duty it was to accomplish his 
death. If, therefore, his body was not raised from the dead, 
there was no guilt in shedding his blood, but the mere per- 
formance of a plain duty. His blood, that is, the guilt of 
shedding it, could not possibly rest on the sanhedrim ; nor, to 
use their language, be brought upon them by the apostles, nor 
by any others. All this the sanhedrim perfectly knew ; and, 
therefore, had they not believed him to have risen from the 
dead, they never could have used this phraseology. 

It is further to be observed, that on both these occasions 
the apostles boldly declared to the sanhedrim, in the most 
explicit terms, that Christ was raised from tbe dead. Yet the san- 


596 IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 

hedrim not only did not charge them with the crime of having 
stolen his body, but did not contradict, nor even comment, on 
the declaration. This could not possibly have happened through 
inattention. Both the sanhedrim and the apostles completely 
knew, that the resurrection of Christ was the point on which 
his cause, and their opposition to it, entirely turned. It was 
the great and serious controversy between the contending par- 
ties ; and yet, though directly asserted to their faces by the 
apostles, the sanhedrim did not even utter a syllable on the 
subject. Had they believed their own story, they would either 
have punished the apostles with death as rebels against the 
Jewish and Bornan governments, or else they would have 
confined them as lunatics. 

There can be no doubt, therefore, from the evidence of the 
fact furnished by the adversaries of the name and faith of 
Christ, that they were convinced he was actually risen from 
the dead. — T. H. Horne : Introduction to Scriptures, Vol. J, 
pp. 108-9. 

A Resurrection of Body and Mot Spirit. — We call attention, then, 
to the fact that I Cor. xv — of such special importance in this 
question — deals with the resurrection of the body throughout. 
We may not be able to decide certainly on how to classify those 
who are in this chapter spoken of as denying the resurrection 
of the dead. But without being able to decide this point, we 
may fairly decide what was the point of difficulty raised by 
them, and disposed of by Paul. There is not the least reason 
to suppose they were Sadducees. The Sadducees were ruled 
out of the sphere of Christian fellowship. Jesus opposed 
them. Paul placed himself on the Pharisees’ side of the con- 
troversy. The gospel itself was so deadly in its assaults upon 
Sadduceeism, by its proclamation of a risen Savior, that from 
the very first the members of this sect were the leaders in 
persecuting the apostles and their converts. There is not 
known to us the least hint in the Hew Testament of any con- 
necting link of sympathy between Sadducee and Christian, by 
which they were likely to disturb the Churches except as its 
persecutors. Of course, these false teachers were not 
Pharisees, for on the question of the resurrection the Pharisees 
were one with the apostles. 

Proved from the Greek Philosophy.— Corinth was a Creek city, 
long renowned as a center of Creek philosophical culture. 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


597 


Although the new Corinth was considerably Latinized, it was 
still a Greek city, and a seat of Greek learning and science, as 
well as of commerce. The Church in Corinth was seriously 
affected by its surroundings ; the ideas and customs and reign- 
ing spirit of the city invaded the Christian sanctuary, as we 
learn from various allusions in the two epistles ; and it would 
have been wonderful, indeed, if the speculations of Greek 
philosophy touching a future life, had not made some encroach- 
ments on the gospel doctrine of immortality. The Greek 
philosophers ridiculed the idea of the resurrection of the body. 
In this they were all agreed. Many of them were skeptical as 
to any life hereafter. Others held to the immortality of the 
soul. But they all agreed that the resurrection of the body 
from the dead was not only undesirable, but unphilosophical 
and absurd. We do not know that modern objectors have 
added anything to the force of the objections filed by the 
ancient philosophers. It was this teaching of Greek philosophy 
that was imported into the Church of Corinth. Some of its 
members, without pausing to think of the hostility of this 
teaching to the very gospel by which they professed to have 
been saved, were attracted by these speculative views, and 
were led to deny the resurrection of the body. That they 
denied the immortality of the soul, there is no evidence. 
Whatever may have been the case with those from whom they 
had derived these notions, there is no evidence that the 
u some ” among the members of the Corinthian Church who 
had imbibed these speculations either denied the immortality 
of the soul or the actual resurrection of Jesus from the dead. 
They had been carried captive by a glittering speculation, with- 
out pausing to reflect how utterly at war it was with the gospel 
which they had received. They stood pretty much where the 
objectors to the resurrection of the body now stand. PauFs 
reference in verse 32 to what is generally regarded as the 
Epicurean maxim, u Let us eat and drink ; for to-morrow we 
die,” does not prove that this doctrine was held by any in the 
Corinthian Church. It is presented simply as all that is left to 
the apostles and to the members of the Corinthian Church, 
if the gospel is not true — if Christ did not rise from the 
dead, and the apostles are found false witnesses concerning this 
fact. 

But, whatever may be concluded as to the peculiar features 


598 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


of these Greek philosophical speculations — whether they were 
grossly materialistic and Epicurean, denying utterly a future 
life ; or, refined and spiritualistic, teaching the immortality of 
the soul ; the one thing that stands out with prominence in this 
chapter is, that they denied the resurrection of the body , and it is 
at this point that Paul meets their teaching, with a view to 
recover his captive brethren out of the meshes of this philoso- 
phy. He is not dealing with Sadducees, who could be reasoned 
with out of the Scriptures, or who, if convinced concerning the 
immortality of the soul, could thence be silenced concerning 
the resurrection of the body. The course pursued is not, there- 
fore, that which Jesus pursued in reasoning with the Sadducees. 
Our Lord proved the conscious existence of the spirit, and thus 
removed all the objection the Sadducee had to the resurrection 
of the body ; Paul proves the resurrection of the body, and, 
carrying this point, needs to spend no words on a point not in 
controversy — the immortality of the spirit. 

It is of the first importance to understand the aim of the 
argument. If it be what we have stated — if the resurrection 
of the body is the theme — there is left no doubt as to the 
teaching of this chapter. Whatever differences of opinion 
may exist as to the meaning of this or that phrase, it is put 
beyond all question that the resurrection of the body and its 
change from mortal to immortal, from corruptible to incorrup- 
tible, is yet future, and is to be accomplished in behalf of all 
the saints at once. 

With that point settled, we shall leave to others the task of 
discussing the analogies suggested in this chapter, and the 
meaning of such phrases as “ spiritual body.” 

The question to be settled, then, is, Does the phrase “resur- 
rection of the dead ” mean merely, in a general way, u the 
future life,” or, does it refer especially to the resurrection of 
the body? We say it refers, beyond reasonable doubt, to the 
resurrection of the body. 

The Thing in a Nut-Shell.— 1 . We quote verse 12: “How if 
Christ be preached that He rose from the dead, how say some 
among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?” 
What is meant in the phrase “ resurrection of the dead,” was 
realized, fulfilled in the resurrection of Christ. That is certain. 
But what was realized in His case ? He died, He was buried, He 
rose again the third day. That which was buried, was that 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


599 


which rose from the dead. It was His body that was buried; 
it was His body that rose and this resurrection of the body 
was the resurrection of the dead. It was the resurrection of 
the body, therefore, which was denied by some in the Corinthian 
Church, when they said there was no resurrection of the dead ; 
and it was the resurrection of the body that Paul affirmed 
when he affirmed the resurrection of the dead. 

We do not see how it is possible to escape from this conclu- 
sion. It is not the continual existence of the spirit of Jesus 
that Paul affirms, or its investiture with a new spiritual body 
at the time of His death; but the resurrection, on the third 
day, of the body that was buried. This is .“the resurrection 
of the dead.” 

It may, indeed, be said, that the resurrection of the body 
of Jesus was a direct certification of the truth of a future life, 
but that it by no means proves that the resurrection of the 
dead is to be after the same fashion. In reply, we note, as a 
further evidence that the resurrection of the body is what is 
meant by the resurrection of the dead. 

2. That Paul says : “ Christ the first-fruits ; afterwards they 
that are His at His coming.” He was the “first-born from the 
dead,” and the divine predestination is that His redeemed 
ones shall be “conformed to His image,” “that He may be the 
first-born among many brethren.” He will fashion their 
bodies “ like unto His glorious body ” — not by a normal pro- 
cess of nature which has been constantly going on, but “ac- 
cording to that power whereby He is able to subdue all things 
unto Himself.” 

3. The difficulty brought forward, and with which Paul 
specially deals, relates to the resurrection of the body. “ How 
are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?” 
This is the point. And this is the question which Paul proceeds 
to deal with. It is not the immortality of the soul, but the 
resurrection of the body, that is the subject of discussion. 
When, therefore, He declares that the corruptible must put on 
incorruption, and the mortal must put on immortality, He 
certainly does not mean that the corruptible spirit must put on 
incorruption, and the mortal spirit must put on immortality ; but 
that the mortal and corruptible body must put on immortality 
and in corruption. — Isaac Errett : Christian Standard, January 
VUh, 1880. 


600 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


More Than Details Wrong, if Anything is Wrong.— A conviction 
that a particular person had risen again, when he had not , is 
simply false, however it may have been produced. And if the 
conviction embodies itself in a circumstantial narrative of facts 
intended to establish the imaginary event, the narrative is 
simply a falsehood and nothing more. There are cases, as for 
example, in the description of the tumult of a battle, where 
fictitious or unreal details convey a relatively true idea of the 
whole. It is obviously impossible either to record or to appre- 
hend the multitudinous phases of action which go to fill up a 
complicated and changing scene ; and the genius of an artist 
may be able to convey to others the reality which he has him- 
self grasped through representative incidents molded to his 
purpose. It might be so, within certain limits, with the details 
of the Eesurrection. But if Christ be not risen, it is the whole 
and not the details, which, on such a supposition, is imaginary. 
The Eesurrection, then, is either a fact in itself, wholly indepen- 
dent of those who were witnesses to it, or it is a fiction — it 
matters not whether designed or undesigned — on which no 
belief can be founded. It is a real link between the seen and the 
unseen worlds, or it is at best the expression of a human 
instinct. Christ has escaped from the corruption of death ; or 
men, as far as the future is concerned, are exactly where they 
were before He came. Whatever may be the civilizing power 
of Christian morality, it can throw no light upon the grave. If 
the Eesurrection be not true, in the same sense in which the 
Passion is true, then Death still remains the great conqueror. 
As far as all experience goes, no pledge has been given to us 
of His defeat. A splendid guess, an inextinguishable desire 
alone have sought to pierce the darkness beyond the tomb, if 
Jesus has not (as we believe) borne our human nature into the 
presence of God. 

What the Resurrection Has to Do With.— When once we grasp 
clearly the momentous interests which are involved in the belief 
in the Eesurrection, we shall be prepared to understand how 
it formed the central point of the apostolical teaching; and yet 
more than this, how the event itself is the central point of 
history, primarily of religious history, and then of civil history 
of which that is the soul. It often seems, indeeed, as though we 
do not realize the vastness of the consequences which it brings. 
An influential Christian teacher has said that the Eesurrection 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


601 


belongs to the teaching on Scripture rather than to the teaching 
on the Person of Christ, forgetting that faith in Christ as the 
Savior, so far as this was a Gospel for the world, did not pre- 
cede but follow it. Even those who hold most firmly to a faith 
in the Resurrection are tempted to regard it as a doctrine rather 
than as a fact, as an article of belief rather than as a sensible 
ground of hope. Gradually we have been led to dissociate faith 
in the resurrection of the body from the actual Resurrection of 
Christ, which is the earnest of it. And not unfrequently we 
substitute for the fulness of the Christian creed the purely 
philosophic conception of an immortality of the soul, which 
destroys, as we shall see hereafter, the idea of the continuance 
of our distinct personal existence. But according to the divine 
instinct of the first age, the message of the Resurrection sums 
up in one fact the teaching of the gospel. It is the one central 
link between the seen and the unseen. We cannot allow our 
thoughts to be vague or undecided upon it with impunity. We 
must place it in the very front of our confession, with all that 
it includes, or we must be prepared to lay aside the Christian 
name. Even in its ethical aspect Christianity does not offer a 
system of morality, but a universal principle of morality which 
springs out of the Resurrection. The elements of dogma and 
morality are indeed inseparably united in the Resurrection of 
Christ; for the same fact which reveals the glory of the Lord, 
reveals at the same time the destiny of man and the permanence 
of all that goes to make up the fulness of human life. If the 
Resurrection be not true, the basis of Christian morality, no 
less than the basis of Christian theology, is gone. The issue 
cannot be stated too broadly. We are not Christians unless 
we are clear in our confession on this point. To preach the 
fact of the Resurrection was the first function of the Evangel- 
ists ; to embody the doctrine of the Resurrection is the great 
office of the Church; to learn the meaning of the Resurrection 
is the task not of one age only, but of all. * * * * 

The Relation of the Resurrection to Doctrine and Facts.— 

Briefly, the Gospel of the Resurrection harmonizes in itself 
the objective and subjective elements of religion. On the one 
hand it reposes on a fact, which, however unique, yet claims 
to belong to the circle of human experience. On the other 
hand, the fact is such, that its personal appropriation offers the 
widest scope for the energies of spiritual life. The Resurrec- 


602 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


tion is sufficiently definite to take religion out of the domain of 
caprice and rest its hopes upon a foundation external to the 
believer ; and it is so far-reaching in its ultimate significance 
as to present itself to every age and every soul with a fresh 
power. It gives faith a firm standing ground in history, and at 
the same time opens a boundless vision of the future develop- 
ment of our present powers. It brings down dogma to earth, 
and then vindicates the infinitude of the issues of temporal 
existence. By the definiteness of its actual occurrence it 
gives dignity to all human action ; by the universality of its 
import it lifts the thoughts of the believer from the man to the 
race and to the world. It stands, so to speak, midway between 
the seen and the unseen; it belongs equally to the spiritual and 
to the material order, and it reconciles both ; it gives immediate 
reality to the one by the manifestation of a human type ; it en- 
nobles the other by the revelation of a divine presence. In 
both respects its teaching is essential to Christianity. — B, F. 
Westcott : Gospel of the Resurrection , pp. 4-11. 

How Are the Dead Raised? — “ Some man may say, How are the 
dead raised up, and with what body do they come ? ” The 
question put in Paul’s day is still frequently repeated in our 
own. How can the same body which falls into dust be raised 
again, to become anew the tabernacle of the immortal spirit? 
The particles of which it is composed may be scattered to the 
four winds, they may assume new forms, they may be made to 
contribute to the formation of other beings — of plants, of ani- 
mals, of men. How can each several particle be disentangled, 
how shall each be brought together again to constitute the 
same body which was dissolved at death? Now, we presume 
to put no limits upon the Almighty power of God. We 
do not doubt that amid all the ceaseless, infinite fluctuations of 
the material particles, His eye could trace each grain of dust, 
and His hand collect it, and bring it back to reconstitute the 
body. But we contend that any such process is as unnecessary 
as it is improbable. 

With What Body Shall We Come Forth 1 ? — We maintain that the 
same body which has been laid in the grave may be raised at 
the last day ; though not one single material particle, which 
went to constitute the one body, shall be found in the other. 
For what is it that is necessary to the identity of the body. 
The identity of the body does not depend on the identity of 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


603 


the material particles of which it is composed. These are in a 
state of perpetual flux. The body of our childhood is not the 
body of our youth, nor the body of our youth the body of our 
manhood, nor the body of our manhood that of our old age. 
Every particle has changed, and yet it is the same body, the 
person to whom it belongs still continues the same person. If 
you insist upon it that every particle of matter of which my 
body is built must be brought together to form my new resur- 
rection-body, then I ask, What body, during this present life, 
is my true body ? Is it the body of my childhood, or of my 
youth, or of my old age ? The body in which I die is no more 
truly mine, than the body with which I came into the world. Both 
are mine, both are in some sense the same, and yet they have 
not a single material particle in common. What possible reason 
is there, then, for contending that the body which is laid in the 
grave, must be brought together again, particle for particle, at 
the resurrection ; when it is no more essentially a part of my- 
self, than my body at any other stage of my existence $ 

Some Principle Remains Permanent. — The only thing of which 
we need to be assured is that the principle of identity which 
governs the formation of the body in this life, shall govern its 
formation at the resurrection. In the ever-flowing torrent of 
life, as wave after wave passes through our bodily frame, bring- 
ing with it growth and variety in the structure, there is some 
principle, or law, or specific form, call it what you will, which 
remains ever the same. The organism is essentially one, 
despite the modifications of size, of form, of inward constitu- 
tion. This holds in every region of nature where there is life. 
From the acorn buried in the earth, there springs first the 
little slender stalk, the germinant shoot hidden between its 
two cotyledons, then the sapling, then the monarch of the 
forest. But the oak, and the germinant shoot, and the acorn, 
unlike as they are in appearance, are one and the same vege- 
table existence. The butterfly which unfolds its wings of 
purple and gold in the summer’s sun, is the same creature 
which was but lately a chrysalis, and before that a crawling 
worm, and before that an embryo in a tiny egg. And is it not 
the same with man ? Is not the human embryo the same indi- 
vidual when it becomes child, youth, old man ? * * * * 

What, then, is this thing which remains ever the same, the same 
in the vegetable in all its developments, the same in the insect 


604 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


in all its metamorphoses, the same in the human body in every 
phase of its existence ? What is this, which never perishes, is 
never destroyed, in all the changes and fluctuations of the 
material organism] It escapes all our investigations ; we see 
it only in its manifestations, in the phenomena of life ; but that 
it is a reality all observation goes to show ; and if through all 
the changes of the body during this life this principle continues 
in all its force, why may it not survive the shock of death ? 
Why may not this specific form, as Gregory of Hyssa terms it, 
remain united to the soul, as he conjectured (and as other 
thinkers like Leibnitz have supposed), after its separation from 
the body, and thus become at length the agent in the resurrec- 
tion, by reconstituting, though in a new and transfigured con- 
dition, the body which was dissolved at death 1 ? Why may not 
the same body, which was sown in corruption, be raised in 
incorruption, and that which was sown a natural body, be 
raised a spiritual body ?******* 

Lastly, this deliverance, this perfection, this glorifying of the 
human body, is in the Christian scheme, intimately connected 
with the deliverance, the perfection, the glorifying of the whole 
visible creation. As they who are one with their risen Lord, 
ransomed by Him from the power of death, and raised with Him 
even here to newness of life, still wait for the adoption, to-wit : 
the redemption of their body; so when that redemption 
shall be accomplished, the creation itself shall be delivered 
from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the 
children of God. There shall be new heavens and a new earth, 
wherein dwelleth righteousness. This is the great consumma- 
tion to which all is tending. — J. J. 8. Perowne : JELulsean Lectures 
for 1868. 

The Bioplasts. — What if I should dissect a human body here ? 
I might have a man made up of a skeleton ; then I could have 
a human form made up of muscle. If I should take out the 
arteries I should have another human form; and just so with 
the veins, and so with the nerves. Were they all taken out and 
held up here in their natural condition, they would have a 
human form, would they not? Very well; now, which form is 
the man? Which is the most important? But behind the 
nerves are those bioplasts. If I could take out those bioplasts 
that wove the nerves, and hold them up here by the side of the 
nerves, all in their natural position, they would have a human 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION, 


605 


form, would they not ? And which is the man ? Your muscles are 
more important than your bones ; your arteries than your mus- 
cles; your nerves than your arteries ; and your bioplasts, that 
wove yonr nerves, are more important than your nerves. But 
you do reach the last analysis here ; for, if you unravel a man 
completely, there is something behind those bioplasts. There 
are many things we cannot see that we know exist. I know 
there is in my body a nervous influence that plays up and down 
my nerves like electricity on the telegraphic wires. I never saw 
it ; I have felt it. Suppose that I could take that out. Suppose 
that just there is my manmade up of nerves, and just yonder 
my man made up of red bioplasts ; and that I have right here 
what I call the nervous influence separated entirely from 
flesh. You would not see it, would you? But would not this 
be a man very much more than that? or that? 

The Innermost and the Outermost. — What if death thus dis- 
solves the innermost from the outermost? We absolutely 
know that that nervous influence is there ? We know, also, that 
there is something behind the action of these bioplasts. If I 
could take out this, which is a still finer thing than what we call 
nervous influence, and could have it held up here, I do not 
know but that it would be ethereal enough to go into heaven ; 
for the Bible itself speaks of a spiritual body. You know it is 
there, this nervous influence. You know it is there, this 
power behind the bioplasts. When the Bible speaks of 
a spiritual body, it does not imply that the soul is material ; 
it does not teach materialism at all ; it simply implies that the 
soul has a glorified enswathement, which will accompany it in 
the next world. I believe that it is a distinct biblical doctrine 
that there is a spiritual body as there is a natural body, and 
that the former has extraordinary powers. It is a body which 
apparently makes nothing of passing through what we call 
ordinary matter. Our Lord had that body after his resurrec- 
tion. He appeared suddenly in the midst of his disciples, 
although the doors were shut. He had on Him the scars that 
were not washed out, and that in heaven had not grown out. 
I tread here upon the edge of immortal mysteries ; but the 
great proposition I wish to emphasize is, that science, in the 
name of the microscope and the scalpel, begins to whisper 
what revelation ages ago uttered in thunders, that there is a 
spiritual body with glorious capacities . — Joseph Cook: Biology, 
yp. 323-4. 


606 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


Immortality Illustrated by the Butterfly, Etc.— Will you, my 
friends, but picture to yourselves the change of plan which 
must be made when a creeping creature is transformed into 
a flying one? Your beautiful tropical butterfly was once a 
repulsive chrysalid. It had only the power of crawling. But 
the bioplasts wove it. Little points of transparent, structure- 
less matter were moving in it, were throwing off cell- walls in 
it, and bringing these walls into the shape, now of a tendon, 
now of a muscle, now of a nerve, and so completing the whole 
marvellous plan of a crawling creature ; disgusting in our first 
sight, a miracle at the second. But now these same bioplasts, 
which, according to materialism, have nothing at all behind them 
but chemical forces, suddenly catch a new and very brilliant 
idea, namely, that they will weave a flying creature. Whence 
comes that? Out of matter; for matter has a physical and a 
spiritual side. They thereupon, without any new environment, 
with the same sun above them, and the same earth beneath 
them, and the same food, begin to execute a wholly new plan, 
or rather to carry out one held in reserve from the first. They 
weave anew ; there appears within, and rising out of, the creep- 
ing, odious worm, your gorgeous tropical butterfly ; and he is 
the same . There is identity between that flying creature and that 
creeping creature. Are they two, or one? You breathed by 
gills once ; you breathe by lungs now. Is your identity affected 
in the change ? Your bioplasts wove you, so that once you had 
a heart of one cavity, and now have one of four. Are you the 
same ? Is your identity affected through all these changes ? 
Every few months, the flux of the particles of the living tissues 
carries away all the particles in the entire physical system. 
How do we retain identity ? Matter has a physical and a spir- 
itual side, indeed. While all the matter that composed my body 
has gone in the flux of growth, I am I, however. * * * 

What if your butterfly were in all his parts as invisible as he 
is in some portions of his wings; and what if, to human ken, 
through sight or touch, there could be no account given what- 
ever of that creature woven out of the loathsome chrysalid ? 
What if, out of that discarded organism, were to arise some- 
thing equally glorious with the butterfly, but wholly invisible, 
would this change be more miraculous than the rising of that 
visible winged creature out of that body ? I think not. If God 
can lift the visible out of the chrysalid, may he not be able to lift 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


607 


the invisible also ? Yes ; but you say that this is Christian mate- 
rialism. I beg your pardon; I know what thoughts beyond the 
reaches of our souls rise for utterance as we face life in death. 

I do not assert that the soul is material ; nor do the Scriptures 
do so ; where they affirm that there is a spiritual body as there 
is a natural body. * * * * But I do affirm, that if 

God, instead of lifting a visible were to lift an invisible, flying 
creature out of the worm-insect or man — he would perform no 
greater miracle than that he does now . — Joseph Cook : Biology , 
pp. 237-9. 

Cook’s Bioplast Theory Questioned.— We observe, with regret, 
that some of our ablest opposers of materialism have wholly 
missed this central truth in psychological physiology, in their 
attempts to solve the problem of human life — namely, this vital 
and mental organism within the physical structure, filling every 
part of it, and constituting its exact but invisible and incorpo- 
real counterpart. , They speak of the substantial soul vaguely, 
as a “ non-atomic ” animating “principle,” just as if any real 
substance could exist without atoms . They dwell ably upon 
Dr. Beale’s bioplasts, those living specks of protoplasm seen 
under the microscope in every cell or fibre of organic tissue, 
and occasionally, as if of secondary importance, speak about 
the force behind these bioplasts, which causes them to act, 
under the indefinite name of an “ ethereal enswathement,” a 
term borrowed from the transcendental, anti-materialistic Ger- 
man philosophy of Lotze and Ulrici, who are opposing Haeckel- 
ism. They correctly note the fact that such bioplasts are 
always busy at work in building up new tissue or repairing old, 
and that they can be seen under a powerful glass, moving hither 
and thither as things of life, picking up and distributing atoms 
of nutrition to strengthen muscle, tendon, vein, nerve, etc., 
and then these great authorities apparently conclude that they 
have struck the keynote to the solution, and have reached the 
lowest or basic stratum of life- sub stance in the human organism^ 
thus framing an impregnable breast-work and barrier, as they 
suppose, to the onslaughts of materialism. 

Bioplasts Terminate at Death.— How vain is this hope ! Not 
a bioplast leaves the body at death. These atoms of so-called 
life-substance are but a part of the physical structure, and 
cease to move at dissolution, the same as do the larger organs 
of the body, and consequently have nothing more to do with 


608 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


the true solution of our problem than have the veins and 
arteries, with their myriad blood-corpuscles, which also cease 
to act at death. Bioplasts, with all the useful knowledge they 
have furnished us, as to the formation of organic tissue, do not 
touch the question of life itself — what it is, how it exists, or 
what becomes of it — and no more meet the objections urged 
by the materialist than would the analysis of the outer cuticle 
of our flesh. Hence, every argument employed in illustrating 
the work of the bioplasts, as a refutatation of materialism, is 
so much labor lost. The whole trouble lies in seeking to solve 
the problem of life by the microscope instead of the magnet. 
Not one step toward the true solution can be made without 
first drawing a distinct line of demarcation between the corpo- 
real and incorporeal substances of Nature — the one tangible , 
the other intangible to sense, the latter only recognizable by 
our reason in analyzing their demonstrable effects upon known 
and visible corporeal bodies, as so clearly illustrated by the 
action of the substantial but incorporeal rays of the magnet. 

Wliat Moves the Bioplast ? — Then, what is it that moves the 
bioplasts, these smallest active atoms of a living organism, 
causing them to work like so many infinitesimal ants'? I 
answer, it is life. What forms the invisible pattern (for pattern 
there must be) around which and through which the bioplasts 
are guided in their work of constructing nerves, muscles, 
bones, ligaments, etc., and by which they are thus prevented 
from making mistakes, substituting a nerve for an artery, a 
ligament for a muscle, etc.? I answer, again, it is life, which, 
could we see it after the body dies, would stand out a trans- 
parent manikin — with every outline of the human body intact 
— a perfect representation of our organic form in all its parts, 
as would a manikin of the arteries, veins and nerves, could 
they alone be lifted from the body without disturbing their 
relative positions. Without the aid of the substantial but 
invisible organism, the working bioplasts of Dr. Beale can no 
more touch the problem of life than can Prof. Haeckel’s mate- 
rial atoms “ placed together in a most varied manner.” With- 
out this view, every effort of modern science and philosophy 
will fail to satisfy the longing, craving wants of honest but 
doubting souls, as to a rational solution of what life is, and how 
it is related to an organic structure, so as to be viewed scien- 
tifically, philosophically and religiously, as a substantial basis 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


609 


for immortality and personal identity in another life. — A.Wil- 
ford Hall : Problem of Human Life , Revised Ed., pp. 45-6. 

The Psychical and the Pneumatic.— “ There is a natural body, 
and there is a spiritual body.” The term w spiritpal,” as the 
Apostle here uses it, cannot mean “made of spirit;” for this 
would be a contradiction in terms, as much as though one 
should speak of an immaterial material. The contrast is not, 
as the authorized version seems to imply, between matter and 
spirit, between what is material and what is immaterial ; the 
contrast is between what is animal and what is spiritual, or, to 
use the Apostle’s own words, between what is “ psychical ” and 
what is u pneumatic.” The assertion which St. Paul makes is 
this : There is a psychical body, or body suited to the lower 
part of our nature ; and there is a pneumatic body, or body 
suited to the higher part of our nature. And his argument is 
this: As certainly as we have a body suited to our lower 
psychical nature, just so certainly shall we have a body suited 
to our higher pneumatic nature. It is sown a psychical body — 
it is raised a pneumatic body ; as there is a body psychical, so 
there is a body pneumatic. Glance for a moment at the state- 
ment that the present body is a psychical body. How true the 
statement is ! However unsuited to the higher, spiritual, pneu- 
matic nature, the present body is admirably suited to the lower, 
animal, psychical nature. See how readily and perfectly it 
obeys the psyche, or animal instincts; how reluctantly and 
imperfectly it obeys the pneuma, or spiritual instincts. The 
savage, so completely the creature of circumstance and impulse 
and instinct, is the type of the psychical man. Notice, also, that 
if ever a man lives a life that is merely animal, it is the barba- 
rian. And there is no man that finds the body such a fit instru- 
ment of his wants and instincts and tendencies as the savage. 
The body is a well nigh perfect organ of the psyche. Well then 
may the apostle call it a psychical body. Glance now at the 
other statement, that the coming body is to be a pneumatic 
body. Bearing in mind that the pneuma, or spirit, is the highest 
part of man’s nature — that part which is made in the image and 
after the likeness of God, and which makes man but little lower 
than God himself— that capacity by which he has the sense of 
God, coming into felt contact with Him, becoming a partaker 
of the Divine Nature as being a son of the Father of Spirits ; it 
needs little argument to show that in what respects this present 

Ml 


610 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


body is most suited to our psychical, animal nature, in those 
respects it is most unsuited to our pneumatic, spiritual nature. 
While the body is an unobstructed inlet and outlet for the 
psyche, it is a blockaded port to the pneuma. It is easy to 
walk by sight, which is a psychical life, for here we have the 
help of the body ; it is hard to walk by faith, which is a pneu- 
matic life, for here we have the embargo of the body. There 
is profound philosophy in a temperate Christian asceticism, 
keeping the body under and bringing it into subjection; it 
clarifies and sharpens the spiritual sense and girds up the pneu- 
matic powers. But even here the body as now constituted is 
at best but a miserable organ of what is highest in man’s nature, 
as many an earnest Christian has bitterly felt. And therefore 
does he, like all those who have the first fruits of the spirit, 
groan within himself, waiting for the adoption, to-wit, the re- 
demption of our body; observe, not the redemption from our 
body, but of our body. 

A Suitable Body Is Given. — And what a glorious body that 
redeemed body will be ! What will be its figure or precise 
nature we know not ; for Holy Scripture has not revealed it. 
But this we do know, for this Holy Scripture has revealed : it 
will be a body as perfectly suited to the pneuma, or our higher 
nature, as the present body is suited to the psyche, or our 
lower nature. And as the pneuma is incomparably nobler than 
the psyche, so will the coming pneumatic body be incomparably 
nobler than the present psychical body. It will be the same 
body as the present, but as much more glorious as the golden 
sheaves of autumn are more glorious than the decaying seeds 
of spring. Blessed, then, is the light which our passage casts 
on the future state. * * * * It tells us that the coming 

pneumatic body will be in very fact the Novum Organon of the 
celestial realm in a sense transcendently sublimer than any 
which Francis Bacon ever conceived. It tells us that the then 
glorified pneuma, girded with a rectified reason, a clarified 
conscience, a free, regent will, gifted with powers of direct 
and sacred intuition, endowed with the dynamic force of an 
immortal growth, and gathering as she careers through the 
eternal cycles fresh and measureless accessions of strength 
and knowledge and love and purity and glory, shall have in 
her spiritual body a perfect and shining vehicle, whose glowing 
axle shall evermore keep glad pace with her own lightning 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


611 


speed. In fine, it tells us that our salvation will be a whole 
salvation, a complete transfiguration of the entire man. — 0. D. 
Boardman : Epiphanies of the Risen Lord, pp. 261-4. 

Annihilation a Dull Prospect. — We cannot help remembering*, 
when we hear philosophers speak so complacently of the pros- 
pect of annihilation, that none of us have yet got fairly clear 
of the penumbra of Christian faith and hope, or of the com- 
forting impression that those who are parted here will in some 
way meet again hereafter. Examples have been held up of 
men of the new school of science who have rested with perfect 
contentment in the belief that this span was all, and have 
even been spurred to higher activity thereby. But these men 
hardly constitute a ground for a fair induction. Not only did 
they spend their lives in a transport of iconoclastic exertion,, 
which allowed no space for melancholy thoughts, but they had 
only just emerged from a state of strong religious conviction, 
the influence of which, however unconscious they might be of 
it, could not fail to linger in their minds. 

That man is fatherless, under the care of no providence, and 
the sport of a blind but irresistible force which in a moment 
wrecks his happiness, perhaps crushes myriads out of exist- 
ence by a death of agony, is an idea which has hardly yet had 
time to present itself to us unveiled and in its full significance. 
Some think that it will be greatly softened if, instead of blind 
force, we teach ourselves to say law. But, in the first place, this 
is a comfort suited rather for the easy-chair of intellectual 
leisure than for rougher situations ; it will not greatly relieve 
the mind of a man who finds himself buried alive in a coal- 
pit, or of a mother who sees her child in the agony of strangu- 
lation by diphtheria. * * * * A man may submit to 

martyrdom for the truth’s sake, if he is to pass through the 
gate of death to the Father of Truth ; he will hardly do so if 
he is to go down into the pit. People, in short, will sacrifice 
themselves to progress and to the general good of their kind 
if they believe that, apart from what may happen to them in 
the flesh, they have a perpetual interest in the result ; on the 
opposite hypothesis, they will not. As we have said before, 
you cannot, in estimating the feelings of men, eliminate antici- 
pation. A subjective existence, to be enjoyed in the lives of 
posterity when you have utterly ceased to be, and the last trace 
of your memory has vanished, is a fantasy which may be 


612 IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 

fondled by a refined imagination, but will heal no wounds and 
countervail no hardships in the case of ordinary men. 

Materialism in Borrowed Hues. — Here, again, the materialist or 
positivist view of life appears to have derived an idea and 
borrowed a hue from Christianity. Christian progress is that 
of the church militant gaining gradually a victory over evil, 
in which every Christian who acts up to his profession will 
have his share. This is a belief which, if sincerely entertained, 
cheers the most arduous, the most wearisome, and the dullest 
path of duty. Moreover, the end of the Christian progress 
is the reception into the divine essence of spirit, perfected 
by trial, and soaring away from the ruin of the material 
globe. The end of positivist progress is a physical catas- 
trophe in which everything will perish. No thought very 
animating or very likely to nerve men to high self-sacrifice 
is produced by the prospect of a march of humanity, like 
that of a blind column of animals or insects, towards final 
and total destruction. That those who at last drop into the 
gulf will be improved specimens of the race, and will carry 
with them the accumulated results of its efforts through all 
the ages, is hardly a redeeming feature of the outlook. 
Science has begun to calculate the rate at which the sun 
exhausts its vital fires ; who can say that the fatal period 
may not even be anticipated by some other astronomical 
agent of destruction ? However that may be, the certain end 
of the collective effort to which we are to immolate ourselves 
individually, according to positivism, is inanity and dust. — 
Goldwin Smith : Pessimism : Atlantic Monthly , February, 1880. 

History of Religion Not Closed Yet.— That the history of relig- 
ion has closed, and that no more efforts will ever be made by 
the human mind to penetrate beyond the veil of sense, and 
approach the Spirit of the Universe, is an opinion which rests 
mainly on the belief that religions are mere crude interpreta- 
tions of natural phenomena; and that this is not their essence 
we have already ventured to submit. Suppose supernaturalism 
to be discarded; this does not put out of the question natural 
manifestations of Deity in the spiritual conceptions, efforts, and 
experiences of men. Christianity itself, though it may cease 
to be accepted as a miraculous revelation, remains the central 
fact of history ; and as such it, in connection with other relig- 
ions, seems to call for an examination which it has not yet 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


613 


received. It is true that religious thought is employed on 
objects not like those of science, perceived by the bodily 
sense. But let evolution itself, which presents all things as in 
course of development, say whether exhaustive apprehension 
and final authority can be claimed for the nerves of sight, 
touch, hearing, taste and smell. Let evolution, itself, say, 
too, whether it is certain that organized matter is the ultimate 
goal of progress, and that nothing answering to the name of 
Spirit can have been evolved. To the Eozoon the limits of the 
knowable were narrow. We are pleading merely for circum- 
spection, and for a careful examination of the phenomena of 
religious history, which are phenomena like the rest. Religious 
sentiment is still strong in the minds of many scientific men, 
who find nothing in the pure monotheistic hypothesis that con- 
tradicts the results of science. 

Cannot Exclude the Future from Our Minds.— At any rate, it is 
vain to bid men exclude these subjects from their minds, and 
think only of making the best of this world. The question, 
in what hands we are— in those of goodness, of something other 
than goodness, or of blind force — is not one concerning the 
nature of things, of which we might be content to remain in 
ignorance ; it is one concerning the estate of man, and it swal- 
lows up all others in its practical importance ; the truth about 
it, if known, would affect all our conceptions, all our estimates 
of the value of objects, every action of our lives. It cannot 
be in its own nature insoluble ; and on the hypothesis that we 
are in the hands of goodness, there seems to be reason for a 
solution, and to believe that the delay and the necessity of 
effort are part of a moral plan. Mankind are not bees ; they 
have learned to look before and after, and will never be cured 
of the habit. The present will not satisfy or engross them. 
Let the place of their brief sojourn be made as commodious as 
possible by science, and, what is more, enriched as much as 
possible by affection. “Aye, sir,” said Johnson, after being 
shown over a luxuriant mansion, “these are the things that 
make death bitter .” — Goldwin Smith: Atlantic Monthly, No- 
vember, 1879. 

Philosophy Dumb. — Concerning the future of the soul, philoso- 
phy can say but little. The pantheistic doctrine of absorption 
is an utterly untenable notion, resting, as it does, on a crude 
image borrowed from the senses, and repudiated by reason. 


614 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


Materialism, of course, holds that death ends all ; but on its 
own principles this conclusion is hasty. Our personality is not 
dependent on the whole body, nor even on the whole brain. 
Great losses of brain matter are compatible with conscious- 
ness and the possession of all our faculties. Besides, materi- 
alistic physiologists have made us very familiar with the 
notion of physiological units which contain the directive force 
of the organism. It is equally possible to imagine molecular 
units which contain the principle of personality. These units 
may be the basis of all organization, and through organization 
they may come to consciousness. It is, therefore, possible to 
conceive some such organic units surviving the wreck of the 
visible body, and reproducing its conscious life in other places 
and forms. Of course, this is merely a speculation, but it is no 
wilder than materialism itself; and materialism must allow such 
a possibility. 

if Man is Matter, Why Not as Eternal as Other Matter]— It is 
very strange that materialists and atheists are willing to 
attribute wonderful wisdom to matter until we come to man, 
and then matter suddenly turns blockhead. It is omniscient 
and omnipotent up to this point, and then an inherent doltish- 
ness manifests itself. This seems to be an inconsequence. This 
matter, which has done so much, must surely be able to do all 
things well. When the scientist finds the realm of law forever 
growing on the realm of disorder, he hastens to proclaim law 
strictly universal. So, when we find matter managing the uni- 
verse with a skill which even intelligence could not surpass, 
and also with an eye to moral ends, the continuity of thought 
seems to demand the conclusion that whatever wisdom and 
righteousness may call for, that matter will victoriously 
accomplish . — Borden P. Bowne : Studies in Theism, pp. 401-2. 

Consequences of Materialistic Principles.— Let us glance at the 
consequences of the materialistic principles. First and fore- 
most, it is clear that they do away with the immortality of the 
soul and all belief in another world. For he who does not 
acknowledge any immaterial principles in man, will not allow 
the existence of an absolute spirit, i. e., of God, either in or 
above the world. The ideas of God as a Spirit, and of the 
human spirit as a distinct substance, are inseparable, and for 
this reason we were obliged carefully to investigate the latter 
question. Every one sees what questionable results follow 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


615 


from the negation of our immortality, even as regards this life, 
and the moral order of the present world. We will not now 
enter into the details of the well-known arguments for the im- 
mortality of the soul, the main purport of which is that God is 
a Spirit, and that man’s soul is a breath of this Spirit, proceed- 
ing therefore from above and not from below ; that it is an entity 
absolutely incomposite, indivisible, and immaterial ; and that 
its immateriality becomes more and more evident the longer it 
is exposed to the impotent attempts made to degrade it to the 
level of mere matter. We would, however, point out in passing, 
that it is precisely the most exact modern research which in- 
creasingly tends to enhance and perfect the ancient arguments 
for immortality derived from nature, from the analogy of the 
spring, the grub, and butterfly. Here is an example. It has 
been observed that the larva of the male stag-beetle, when it 
becomes a chrysalis, constructs a larger case than it needs to 
contain its curled-up body, in order that the horns which will 
presently grow, may also find room. What does the larva know 
of its future form of existence ? And yet it arranges its house 
with a view to it? Is it then to be supposed that the same 
Power, which created both the beetle and the man, “instilled 
into the beetle a true instinct, and into man a lying faith, which 
makes him arrange his present life with a view to a future one 
otherwise than he would were this not the case — a faith which 
arises as naturally, and is as necessary for the development of 
mankind as instinct in the larva?” fRTJETE,tet supra.) 

Is Thought a Secretion of the Brain 1 — If there is no such thing 
as a soul, not only would a future life be done away with, and 
all religion be merged in the worship of this world, * * 

but you will also perceive what revolutions must follow in the 
whole mode which has hitherto obtained of conducting our life, 
most of all in education. If thought is a secretion of the brain, 
produced from our nourishment by means of a kind of fermen- 
tation or filtration, or in some other way, we can breed youths 
at our pleasure to be warriors, philosophers, musicians, and the 
like ; and the most important question for a teacher would 
always be, whether to feed his pupil to-day on roast veal or 
roast beef, on this or that kind of food or drink. Those who 
are slow of understanding ought to eat large quantities of peas, 
fish, eggs, and other phosphoric food, in order to increase and 
accelerate their powers of thought. 


616 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


Materialism Destroys All the Moral Faculties.— But we are left 
in no doubt whatever on the point, that everything which has 
hitherto been cherished and cultivated, as manners and mor- 
ality, as freedom of the spirit and of the will, must sink into 
the grave of a fatalistic necessity. We see clearly how 
thoroughly and with what shameless audacity Materialism 
would destroy all the moral faculties of our life, for instance, 
in the words of Moleschott, that 44 sin lies in the Unnatural, 
and not in the will to do evil. Speech and style, good and bad 
actions, courage, half-heartedness, and treachery, are all 
natural phenomena, and all of them stand in a direct relation 
to indispensable causes as their natural consequences, just as 
much as the revolutions of the globe.” 44 The brain alters with 
the ages ; and with the brain, custom, which is the standard of 
morals, is altered also.” 44 Wickedness in individuals, like the 
whole man himself, is therefore only a natural phenomenon. 
And as the words, 4 Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself/ 
form the pith of Christian morals, so the first maxim of the 
modern gospel should be 4 To understand everything is to 
tolerate everything. 7 77 (p. 466.) 

Is Man But a Boast 1 ? — At the end of his book Moleschott 
vouchsafes to the world the sapient and delicate-minded 
advice, that the stationary church-yards, in which so much 
excellent manure remains useless, should be changed into 
movable churchyards, in order that the dead may attain the 
only immortality which now remains open to them, and have 
the privilege of impregnating barren ground with ammonia, 
carbonic acid, etc., to help towards the production and nour- 
ishment of fresh men ! Paine, one of the latest of French 
materialists, pronounces man to be a beast in human shane, 
which is led by humor and instinct. 44 Humor and instinct pro- 
ceed from the blood. Hence arises habit; necessity brand- 
ishes the whip, and the beast goes forward. But being full of 
pride and conceit, the beast fancies that it moves in accordance 
with its own will, and that there is no whip urging it forward. 77 
* * * * Yogt, however, as he always does, expresses him- 

self on this point most unequivocally and unconcernedly of 
all. It is indeed true. Freewill does not exist, neither does 
any amenability or responsibility, such as morals and penal 
justice, and Heaven knows what else would impose on us. At 
no moment are we our own masters any more than we can 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


617 


decree as to the secretions of our kidneys. The organism can- 
not govern itself; it is governed by the law of its material 
combination. It is impossible to demonstrate the admissibility 
of punishment, or to prove that there is any such thing as 
amenability or responsibility.” 

No Juries Nor Jails Needed, if No Responsibility.— Jurists, there- 
fore, do not fare any better than theologians. It is evident that 
there is no room for them in the world now. There is no right 
to punish, for there is no responsibility ; everything takes place 
under an iron necessity. The man who robs and murders is no 
worse than the falling stone which crushes a man, nor, of 
course, any more valuable ; both are involuntary slaves of the 
law of nature. Criminals should be sent into hospitals and 
asylums, not to prison . — Christlieb : Modern Doubts pp. 157-9. 

All we Know Concerning Mind When Body Dies.— When the 
body dies, the mind is no longer manifested through it. That 
is all we immediately know by perception. The inference that 
the mind has therefore ceased to be at all, is a mere supposi- 
tion. It may still live and act independently of the body. An 
outside phenomenon can prove nothing here. We must by 
some psychological probe pierce to the core of the being, and 
discern, as there concealed, the central interpretation of truth, 
or else, in want of this, turn from these surface-shadows and 
seek the solution in some other province. Millions of appear- 
ances being opposed to the truth or inadequate to hint it, we 
must never implicitly trust their suggestions. What micro- 
scope can reveal the organic life in a kernel of corn, and show 
that through the decay of that kernel a stalk will spring up 
and bear a thousand kernels more? But if a new mental life 
emerges from the dying form of man, it lies in a spiritual realm 
wherein to we have no instruments to gaze. Every existent 
thing has its metes and limits. In fact, the only final weapon 
and fort of a thing is its environing limitation. It goes into 
nothing, if that be taken down, the atheist says; into infinity, 
the mystic says. The mistake and difficulty lie in discerning 
what the last wall around the essence is. “ The universe is the 
body of our body.” The boundary of our life is boundless 
life. Schlegel has somewhere asked the question : “ Is life in 
us, or are we in life?” Because man appears to be wholly 
extinguished in death, we have no right whatever in reason to 
conclude that he really is so. The star which seemed to set in 


618 IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 

the western grave of aged and benighted time, we, soon 
coming round east to the true spirit-sky, may discern bright in 
the morning forehead of eternity. 

No Safe Reasoning from the Husk to the Kernel. — There can be 
no safe reasoning from the outmost husk and phenomenon of a 
thing to its inmost essence and result. And, in spite ot any 
possible amount of appearance, man himself may pass distinct 
and whole into another sphere of being when his flesh falls to 
dust. That science should search in vain with her finest 
glasses to discern a royal occupant reigning in the purple- 
chambered palace of the heart, or to trace any such mysterious 
tenant departing in sudden horror from the crushed and bleed- 
ing house of life, belongs to the necessary conditions of the 
subject; for spirit can only be spiritually discerned. As well 
might you seek to swell a color, or taste a sound, tie a knot of 
water, or braid a cord of wind. 

Abstract Argument from Speculative Philosophy.— Next comes 
the abstract argument from speculative philosophy. Under this 
head are to be included all those theories which deny the soul 
to be a spiritual entity, but reduce it to an atomic arrangement, 
or a dependent attribute, or a process of action. Heraclitus 
held that the soul was fire ; of course, when the fuel was ex- 
hausted the fire would go out. Thales taught that it was water ; 
this might all evaparate away. Anaximenes affirmed that it was 
air, of which all things were formed by rarefaction and conden- 
sation ; on such a supposition it could have no permanent per- 
sonal identity. Critias said it was blood ; this might degenerate 
and lose its nature, or be poured upon the ground. Leucippus 
maintained that it was a peculiar concourse of atoms ; as these 
came together, so they might fly apart and there be an end of 
what they formed. The followers of Aristotle asserted that it 
was a fifth unknown substance, with properties of its own, 
unlike those of fire, air, water, and earth. This might be mortal 
or immortal ; there was nothing decisive in the conception or 
the defining terms to prove which it was. Accordingly, the 
Peripatetic school has always been divided on the question of 
the immortality of the soul, from the time of its founder’s im- 
mediate disciples to this day. It cannot be clearly shown what 
the mighty Stagyrite’s own opinion really was. 

But Arbitrary Hypotheses. — Speculative conceptions as to the 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


619 


nature of the soul like the foregoing, when advanced as argu- 
ments to establish its proper mortality, are destitute of force, 
because they are gratuitous assumptions. They are not gener- 
alizations based on careful inductions of facts; they are only 
arbitrary hypotheses. Furthermore, they are inconsistent both 
with the facts and phenomena of experience. Mind cannot fairly 
be brought into the category of the material elements ; for it 
has properties and performs functions emphatically distinguish- 
ing it from everything else, placing it in a rank by itself, with 
exclusive predicates of its own. Can fire think ? Can water 
will? Can air feel? Can blood see? Can a mathematical 
number tell the difference between good and evil ? Can earth 
be jealous of a rival, and loyal to a duty ? Can a ganglion solve 
a problem in Euclid or understand the Theodicee of Leibnitz? 
It is absurd to confound things so distinct. Mind is mind, and 
matter is matter ; and though we are now consciously ac- 
quainted with them only in their correlation, yet there is as 
much reason for supposing that the former survives the close 
of that correlation as for supposing that the latter does. True, 
we perceive the material remaining and do not perceive the 
spirit. Yes ! but the differentiation of the two is exactly 
this, that one is appreciable by the senses, while the other 
transcends and baffles them. It is absolutely inconceivable 
in imagination, wholly incredible to reason, intrinsically non- 
sensical every way, that a shifting concourse of atoms, a 
plastic arrangement of particles, a regular succession of 
galvanic shocks, a continuous series of nervous currents, 
or anything of the sort, should constitute the reality of 
a human soul, the process of a human life, the accumu- 
lated treasures of a human experience, all preserved at 
command and traversed by the moral lines of personal identity. 
The things lie in different spheres and are full of incommuni- 
cable contrasts. However numerously and intimately cor- 
related the physical and psychical constituents of man are, 
yet, so far as we can know anything about them, they are 
steeply opposed to each other both in essence and function. 
Otherwise consciousness is mendacious, and language is 
unmeaning. 

What is the Mind I — A recent able author speaks of “that con- 
geries of organs whose union forms the brain and whose action 
constitutes the mind." The mind, then, is an action ! Can an 


620 IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 

action love and hate, choose and resolve, rejoice and grieve, 
remember, repent, and pray? Is not an agent necessary for an 
action ? All such speculative conceptions as to the nature of 
the soul as make it purely phenomenal are to be offset, if they can 
be, by the view which exhibits the personal ego or conscious 
self-hood of the soul, not as an empty spot in which a swarm 
of relations center as their goal-point, but as an inde- 
structible monad, the innermost and substantial essence and 
cause of the organization, the self-apprehending and unchangea- 
ble axis of all thinking and acting. Some of the most 
free, acute, learned, wise and powerful thinkers of the 
world have been champions of this doctrine — especially among 
the moderns may be named Leibnitz, Herbart, Goethe and 
Hartenstein. Jacobi most earnestly maintained it, both against 
Mendelssohn and against Fichte. 

An Entity and Not a Mere Functional Operation.— That the mind 
is a substantial entity, and therefore may be conceived as im- 
mortal — that it is not a mere functional operation accompanying 
the organic life, a phantom procession of conscious states filing 
off on $he stage of the cerebrum “ in a dead march of mere 
effects n — that it is not, as old Aristoxenus dreamed, merely a 
harmony resulting from the form and nature of the body in the 
same way that a tune springs from the consenting motions of 
a musical instrument — seems to be shown by facts of which we 
have direct knowledge in consciousness. We think that the 
mind is an independent force, dealing with intellectual products, 
weighing opposing motives, estimating moral qualities, resisting 
some tendencies, strengthening others, forming resolves, decid- 
ing upon its own course of action, and carrying out its chosen 
designs accordingly. If the soul were a mere process, it could 
not pause in mid-career, select from the mass of possible con- 
siderations those adapted to suppress a base passion or to 
kindle a generous sentiment, deliberately balance rival solicita- 
tions, and when fully satisfied, proceed. 

The Soul More Than a Harmony.— Yet all this it is constantly 
doing. So, if the soul were but a harmony, it would give no 
sounds contrary to the affections of the lyre it comes from. 
But, actually , it resists the parts of the instrument from which 
they say it subsists, exercising dominion over them, punishing 
some, persuading others, and ruling the desires, angers, and 
fears, as if itself of a different nature. Until an organ is seen 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


621 


to blow its own bellows, mend its shattered keys, move its own 
pedals, and play, with no foreign aid, “I know that my 
Redeemer liveth,” or a violin tunes up its discordant strings 
and wields its bow in a spontaneous performance of the Carni- 
val, showing us every Cremona as its own Paganini, we may ? 
despite the conceits of speculative disbelief, hold that the mind 
is a dynamic personal entity. That thought is the very u latch- 
string of a new-world’s wicket.” — W. E. Alger: History of the 
Doctrine of a Future Life, pp. 617-20. 

Mind More Than a Manifestation.— Some, who have attended 
exclusively to the close relationship which indubitably exists 
between corporeal and mental states, have thought that all the 
operations of the Mind are but manifestations or expressions 
of material changes in the Brain : — that thus Man is but a think- 
ing machine , his conduct being entirely determined by his orig- 
inal constitution, modified by subsequent conditions over which 
he has no control, and his fancied power of self-direction being 
altogether a delusion; and hence that notions of duty or re- 
sponsibility have no real foundation, Man’s character being 
formed for him, and not by him, and his mode of action in each 
individual case being simply the consequence of the reaction of 
his Brain upon the impression which called it into play. On 
this creed, what is commonly called Criminality is but one form 
of Insanity, and ought to be treated as such ; Insanity itself is 
nothing else than a disordered action of the Brain : and the 
highest elevation of Man’s psychical nature is to be attained by 
due attention to all the conditions which favor his physical 
development. ********* 

Who Reduces Man to a Puppet ] — In reducing the Thinking Man 
to the level of a “ puppet that moves according as its strings 
are pulled,” the Materialistic Philosopher places himself in 
complete antagonism to the positive conviction, which — like 
that of the existence of an External World — is felt by every 
right-minded Man who does not trouble himself by speculating 
upon the matter, that he really does possess a self-determining 
power , which can rise above all the promptings of suggestion, 
and can, within certain limits, mold external circumstances to its 
own requirements, instead of being completely subjugated by 
them. — Dr, W, B . Carpenter : Mental Physiology, pp. 3-5. 

Relation of Soul to Body that of Rower to Boat.— If the 


622 IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 

Greeks had possessed the microscope, they would in all proba- 
bility never have been thrown into debate over the famous 
question of their philosophy whether the relation of the soul 
to the body is that of harmony to a harp, or of a rower to a 
boat (Plato : Phgedoj. According to the former of these two 
theories, the music must cease when the harp is broken ; 
according to the latter, the rower may survive, although his 
boat is destroyed. He may be completely safe, even when his 
frail vessel, splintered by all the surges and lightnings, rots on 
the tusks of the reefs, or sinks in the fathomless waste, or 
dissolves to be blown about the world by the howling seas. In 
the one case, death does, in the other it does not, end all. 
Dim as was to the Greeks of Pericles, day the whole field 
which science has entered with the microscope for the first 
time in the last fifty years, all their greatest poets and philoso- 
phers held that the relation of the soul to the body is that of 
the rower to a boat. This was the common metaphor as men 
conversed on this theme under the Acropolis two thousand 
years ago. Without Christian prejudices, Greek tragedy is 
full of the dying faith of Socrates. iEschylus, with his eyes of 
dew and lightning fixed on the fact of immortality, strikes the 
central chord of his harp ; and one terrific thrum of it I often 
in still days hear across twenty centuries : 

“Blood for blood, and blow for blow; 

Thou shalt reap as thou dost sow.” 

What if Aristotle and Plato, and iEschylus had had Beale’s 
and Helmholtz’s and Dana’s eyes in the study of living 
tissues ? 

Life Directs the movements of the Bioplasts.— When modern 
investigation asserts that life directs the movements of bio- 
plasm, it does not deny at all that currents of physical and 
chemical forces are floating around the bioplast boat. It 
asserts simply that the oars are in the hands of life. You 
will not understand me to deny that the rower in the boat is 
aided by the currents beneath him, by the winds around him, 
and by his own weight and the inertia of the vessel. Never- 
theless, between the rower and the boat on the one hand, 
the inert log that may be floating beside him on the other, there 
is plainly all the difference that exists between the living 
and the not-living. Your rower takes advantages of all the 
forces around him ; he can give them new directions ; he pre- 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 623 

sides over them. He can sail against the wind; he can row 
against the current ; he governs the forces that wheel in mys- 
terious complex cycles above and around and beneath him ; he 
makes them his own, and so is a living thing on the water. 
Just so life uses the physical and chemical forces at work in 
living organisms. — J oseph Cook: Biology, pp. 137-9. 

Soul Requires Good Cultivation.— If the soul be immortal, it 
requires to be cultivated with attention, not only for what we 
call the time of life, but for that which is to follow — I mean eter- 
nity ; and the least neglect in this point may be attended with 
endless consequences. If death were the final dissolution of 
being, the wicked would be great gainers by it, by being 
delivered at once from their bodies, their souls, and their vices; 
but as the soul is immortal it has no other means of being freed 
from its evils, nor any safety for it, but in becoming very good 
and very wise; for it carries nothing with it but its bad or good 
deeds, its virtues and vices, which are commonly the con- 
sequences of the education it has received, and the causes of 
eternal happiness or misery . — Socrates : Plato’s Phcedo. 

Know Enough to Hope for Immortality.— We suppose that we 
are acquainted with matter and all its elements ; yet we cannot 
even guess at the cause of electricity, or explain the laws of 
the formation of the stones that fall from meteors. There may 
be beings, thinking beings, near or surrounding us, which we 
do not perceive, which we cannot imagine. We know very 
little ; but, in my opinion, we know enough to hope for the 
immortality, the individual immortality of the better part of 
man . — Sir Humphrey Davy. 

Everything Far Short of What it Will Be. — All great natures are 
lovers of stability and permanence, as the type of the Eternal. 
After science begins, belief of permanence must follow in a 
healthy mind. Things so attractive, designs so wise, the secret 
workman so transcendently skillful that it tasks successive 
generations of observers only to find out, part with part, the 
delicate contrivance and adjustment of a weed, of a moss, to 
its wants, growth, and perpetuation, all these adjustments be- 
coming perfectly intelligible to our study, — and the contriver 
of it all forever hidden! To breathe, to sleep, is wonderful. 
But never to know the Cause, the Giver, and infer his character 
and will! Of what import this vacant sky, these puffing ele- 


624 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


ments, these insignificant lives full of selfish loves, and quar 
rels, and ennui? Everything is prospective, and man is to live 
hereafter! That the world is for his education is the only sane 
solution of the enigma. * * * * Franklin said, 

“Life is rather a state of embryo, a preparation for life. A man 
is not completely born until he has passed through death.” 
Every really able man, in whatever direction he work — a man 
of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a 
painter — if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, 
however much admired, as far short of what it should be. What 
is this Better, this flying Ideal, but the perpetual promise of his 
Creator? — Ralph Waldo Emerson: Immortality , pp. 75-81. 

It Must Be So. — It must be so — Plato, thou reasonest well ! 
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, this longing 
after immortality ? Or whence this secret dread, and inward 
horror of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul back on 
herself, and startles at destruction? ? Tis the divinity that 
stirs within us ; ’tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter, 
and intimates eternity to man. Eternity ! thou pleasing, dread- 
ful thought ! Through what variety of untried being, through 
what new scenes and changes must we pass ? The wide, the 
unbounded prospect lies before me ; but shadows, clouds and 
darkness rest upon it. — Joseph Addison : Cato , Act 5. 

The Implanting of Desires Necessitates Futurity.— We may as 
well suppose that God has made eyes without light, or ears 
without sounds, as that he has implanted any desires in us 
which he has made nothing to answer. There is no one exam- 
ple can be given of this in any kind whatsoever ; for should 
any man be so extravagant as to desire to fly in the air, to 
walk upon the sea, and the like, you would not call these the 
desires of nature, because our natures are not fitted for them ; 
but all the desires which are founded in nature have their 
natural objects. And can we then think, that the most 
natural and most necessary desire of all has nothing to 
answer it? that nature should teach us above all things to 
desire immortality which is not to be had? Especially 
when it is the most noble and generous desire of human 
nature, that which most of all becomes a reasonable creature 
to desire; nay, that which is the governing principle of all 
our actions, and must give laws to all our other passions, 
desires and appetites. What a strange creature has God made 


IMMORTALITY AND THE RESURRECTION. 


625 


man, if he deceive him in the most fundamental, and most 
universal principle of action; which makes his whole life 
nothing else but one continued cheat and imposture. — William 
Sherlock: On the Immortality of the Soul. 


? 


\ 


•, < 


* 




Nl 



l 


RETRIBUTION 


cg^FTURE Retribution has become to us a kind of figment. 

Hell is in the world of shadows. The tone in which edu- 
cated men speak of it still is often only that good humored 
condescension which makes allowance for childish supersti- 
tion. 

How the Question Now Stands.— Part of this credulity arises 
from the confessedly symbolical intimations of Scripture on 
the subject. We read of the fire and the worm; of spirits 
being salted with fire ; of a lake of fire and brimstone. 
All this tells solely of physical suffering. And, accordingly, 
for centuries, this was the predominant conception of Christen- 
dom on the subject. Scarcely any other element was admitted. 
Whoever has seen those paintings on which the master-spirits 
have thrown down the conceptions of their age, will remember 
that hideous demons, distorted countenances, and waves of 
flame, represent the whole idea. And in that immortal work in 
which he who sung of hell, purgatory, and heaven, has em- 
bodied the belief of his day, still the same fact prevails. You 
read of the victims of unchaste life hurried on the dark whirlwind 
forever ; of the heretics in their coffins of intense fire ; and of 
the guilty spirits who are plunged down in “ thick-ribbed ice.” 
But in those harrowing pictures which his genius has painted 
with such vividness there is not one idea of mental suffering 
embodied. It is all bodily, awful, intolerable torture. 

What We Believe No Longer. — Now, all this we believe no 
longer. The circles of hell and the mountain of purga- 
tory are as fabulous to us as the Tartarus of the heathens. 
Singular, that in an age in which the chief aim of science 
appears to be to get rid of physical pain, and discom- 
fort — as if these were the worst evils conceivable — the idea of 
a bodily hell should be just the one at which we have learned 
to smile. But, with the form, we have also dispossessed our- 
selves of belief in the reality of retribution at all. 


RETRIBUTION. 


627 


Now, Scripture language is symbolical. There is no salt, no 
worm, no fire, to torture. I say not that a diseased soul may 
not form for itself a tenement hereafter, as here, peculiarly 
fitted to be the avenue of suffering; but unquestionably we 
cannot build upon these expressions a material hell. 

What Hell Is. — Hell is the infinite terror of the soul, whatever 
that may be. To one man it is pain. Rid him of that, he can bear 
all degradation. To another it is public shame. Save him from 
that, and he will creep and crawl before you to submit to any 
reptile meanness. “Honor me, now, I pray thee, before the 
people,” till Samuel turns from the abject thing in scorn. To 
others, the infinite terror is that compared with which all these 
would be a bed of roses. It is the hell of having done wrong ; 
the hell of having had a spirit from God pure, with high aspira- 
tions, and to be conscious of having dulled its delicacy, and 
degraded its desires; the hell of having quenched a light 
brighter than the sun’s; of having done to another an injury 
that through time and through eternity never can be undone — 
infinite, maddening remorse — the hell of knowing that every 
chance of excellence, and every opportunity of good, has been 
lost forever. This is the infinite terror ; this is wrath to come. 
F. W. Robertson , Vol. 1st , pp. 146-8. 

If Not a Flame, What? — If any one should curiously inquire 
about flame, what is its nature, and how it can hurt a spirit, I 
can give no information on the subject, and I can gather none 
from the parable. One thing I know, that this representation 
is a red light hung out before one, as I am rushing forward on 
the line of life — hung out to warn me of danger, and hung out 
by the hand of Him who came to save the lost. I understand 
perfectly what the beacon means to me ; it is my part to take 
the warning which it gives ; and, as to the exact state of events 
and capabilities in the world to come, I shall learn all when I 
enter it. It may be quite true that there is not a flame like that 
which we are accustomed to see, and not a body, previous to 
the resurrection, that may be burned in it. But He who gave 
the word is my Friend; and He is true ; I shall trust Him. He 
knows what I understand by a flame, He knows how I am 
affected by the thought of the pain which it inflicts. Knowing 
all these, He has employed that word in order to apply the ter- 
rors of the Lord for my warning; He has done all things well. 
William Arnot : The Parables of Our Lord, p. 476. 


628 


RETRIBUTION. 


Material Images Employed, — We are aware of the material 
images employed in Scripture, and by which it bodies forth its 
representation of both — of the fire, and the brimstone, and the 
lake of living agony, and the gnashing of teeth, and the wail- 
ings, the ceaseless wailings of distress and despair unutterable, 
by which the one is set before us in characters of terror and 
most revolting hideousness — of the splendor, the spaciousness^ 
the music, the floods of melody and sights of surpassing loveli- 
ness, by which the other is set before us in characters of bliss- 
and brightness unperishable ; with all that can regale the glori- 
fied senses of creatures, rejoicing forever in the presence and 
before the throne of God. We stop not to enquire, and far less 
to dispute, whether these descriptions, in the plain meaning* 
and very letter of them, are to be realized. But we hold that 
it would purge theology from many of its errors, and that it 
would guide and enlighten the practical Christianity of many 
honest inquirers — if the moral character both of heaven and 
hell were more distinctly recognized, and held a more prominent 
place in the regards and contemplations of men. 

The Moral Rather Than the Material. — If it, indeed, be true that 
the moral, rather than the material, is the main ingredient,, 
whether of the coming torment or the coming ecstaey — then 
the hell of the wicked and the heaven of the virtuous may be 
said to have already begun. The one, in the bitterness of an 
unhinged and dissatisfied spirit, has a foretaste of the wretched- 
ness before him ; the other, in the peace and triumphant com- 
placency of an approving conscience, has a foretaste of the 
happiness before him. Each is ripening for his own everlasting 
destiny ; and whether in the depravities that deepen and accu- 
mulate on the character of the one, or in the graces that brighten 
and multiply upon the other— we see materials enough, either 
for the worm that dieth not, or for the pleasures that are for- 
ever more. 

But again, it may be asked, will spiritual elements alone suffice 
to make up, either the intense and intolerable wretchedness of 
a hell, or the intense beatitude of a heaven ? For an answer to 
this question, let us first turn your attention to the former of 
these receptacles. And we ask you to think of the state of that 
heart in respect to sensation, which is the seat of a concentrated 
and all-absorbing selfishness, which feels for no other interest 
than its own, and holds no fellowship of truth or honesty or 


RETRIBUTION. 


629 


confidence with the fellow-beings around it. The owner of such 
a heart may live in society ; but, cut off as he is by his own 
sordid nature from the reciprocities of honorable feeling and 
good faith, he may be said to live an exile in the midst of it. 
He is a stranger to the daylight of the moral world ; and instead 
of walking abroad on an open platform of free and fearless com- 
munion with his fellows, he spends a cold and heartless exis- 
tence in the hiding-place of his own thoughts. 

Tlie Inner Hell. — You mistake it, if you think of this creeping 
and ignoble creature, that he knows aught of the real truth or 
substance of enjoyment; or however successful he may have 
been in the wiles of his paltry selfishness, that a sincere or a 
solid satisfaction has been the result of it. On the contrary, if 
you enter his heart, you will find there a distaste and disquie- 
tude in the lurking sense of its own worthlessness ; and that 
dissevered from the respect of society without, it finds no refuge 
within, where he is abandoned by the respect of his own con- 
science. It does not consist with moral nature, that there 
should be internal happiness or internal harmony, when the 
moral sense is made to suffer perpetual violence. A man of 
cunning and concealment, however dexterous, however triumph- 
ant in his worthless policy, is not at ease. The stoop, the down- 
cast regards, the dark and sinister expression, of him who can- 
not lift up his head among his fellow-men, or look his companions 
in the face, are the sensible proofs that he who knows himself 
to be dishonest feels himself to be degraded ; and the inward 
sense of dishonor which haunts and humbles him here, is but 
the commencement of that shame and everlasting contempt to 
which he shall awaken hereafter. 

Enough to Overwhelm the Soul. — This, you observe, is a purely 
moral chastisement ; and apart altogether from the infliction of 
violence or pain on the sentient economy is enough to over- 
whelm the spirit that is exercised thereby. Let him, then, that 
is unjust now be unjust still; and, in stepping from time to 
eternity, he bears, in his own distempered bosom, the materials 
of his coming vengeance along with him. The character itself 
will be the executioner of its own condemnation ; and when, 
instead of each suffering apart, the unrighteous are congregated 
together — as in the parable of the tares, where, instead of each 
plant being severally destroyed, the order is given t o bind them 
np in bundles and burn them— we may be well assured, that, 


630 


RETRIBUTION. 


where the turbulence and disorder of an unrighteous society 
are superadded to those sufferings which prey in secrecy and 
solitude within the heart of each individual member, a tenfold 
fiercer and more intolerable agony will ensue from it. The 
anarchy of a state, when the authority of its government is for 
a time suspended, forms but a feeble representation of that 
everlasting anarchy, when the unrighteous of all ages are let 
loose to act and react with unmitigated violence on each other.. 
In this conflict of assembled myriads ; this fierce and fell collis- 
ion between the outrages of injustice on the one side and the 
outcries of resentment on the other ; and, though no pain were 
inflicted, in this war of passions and of purposes, the passion 
and purpose of violence in one quarter calling forth the passion 
and purpose of keenest vengeance back again — though no ma- 
terial or sentient agony were felt — though a war of disembodied 
spirits— yet in the wild tempest of emotions alone — the hatred,, 
the fury, the burning recollection of injured rights, and the 
brooding thoughts of yet unfulfilled retaliation — in these — and 
these alone, do we behold the materials enough of a dire and 
dreadful pandemonium; and apart from corporeal suffering 
altogether, may we behold, in the full and final developments 
of character alone, enough for imparting all its corrosion to the 
worm that dieth not, enough for sustaining in all its fierceness 
the fire that is not quenched. — Chalmer’s Sermons , Vol, 1 st r 
pp. 363-4. 

Sin and Punishment Correspond.— Some men would make sin a 
very light thing, and so count all teaching of everlasting pun- 
ishment a monstrous error, wholly incongruous with our ideas 
of a just God. Others would make God the author of every- 
thing, sin included: and, therefore, responsible for all sin’s 
enormity, and hence count the everlasting punishment of man 
an outrage on justice. God’s revealed word strikes away the 
foundations of both these philosophic theories. It declares 
sin to be rebellion against the Holy Ruler of the Universe. It 
describes it as corrupting the whole being of man. It shows 
it to be abhorrent to a righteous God, putting the sinner out of 
all connection with the purity of heaven, and bringing necessa- 
rily upon him all the woes that separation from God implies. 
It further teaches that God in no sense whatever is the author 
of sin, that He never decreed it, or encouraged it, or connived 
at it, but that it is the offspring of man’s unfettered will, and 


RETRIBUTION. 


631 


that on man alone is the responsibility. This world of man^ 
kind is not a machine made to go as it does by God’s decrees. 
It is a world of independent wills, made independent in the 
likeness of God at the creation. God made man upright, but 
man sought out the many inventions of sin. God brought up 
and nourished children, but they rebelled againt Him. To say 
that all this was pre-arranged and effected by God Himself is 
to say that His word is all a sham, and that His expostulations 
with the wicked are all gross hypocrisy. God declares that He 
wishes all men to come to repentance. What does this mean 9 
if it does not mean that God both has no hand whatever in 
their sin, and also has offered His grace to all as far as He 
consistently could. 

Must Take Things As Wc Find Thera.— We are to take things as 
we find them, and not philosophize against facts and re velar 
tion. There is a war against God. The human heart is engaged 
in that war, and is an enemy to God. All questions as to the 
origin of this war have nothing to do with altering the fact. 
War against God must be the most awful fact in the universe, 
and those who war against God must occupy the most fearful 
position imaginable. Now, all sin must be brought to this 
standard, and rank in this category, and all sinners must be 
seen in their true position before we can judge about the right- 
eousness of eternal punishment. Know what the infinite holi- 
ness of God is, and know what war against that holiness 
is in the human heart, and there will be found all possible 
congruity between eternal sin and eternal punishment. The 
alienated race of man, as such, must suffer eternal death — that 
is, eternal banishment from God. The only exception is Christ 
Jesus, the only sinless man and those who are in Him. The 
hand on the head of the sacrifice betokened this union from 
the beginning. He, as sinless, could suffer for all those who 
would unite themselves to Him and receive His Spirit. There 
is nothing strange in eternal punishment, but something very 
strange in salvation. Men talk about eternal punishment as if 
it were an ab extra work of God forever scourging souls for 
past sins, and so they very naturally conclude from these 
premises that God might stop scourging if He wished to, and 
let man up, and then man would be happy. But this is a very 
erroneous notion of the punishment of hell. The sinners’ 
torture is the operation of their own sin. “Where their worm 


632 


RETRIBUTION. 


never dies and their fire is never quenched” — the worm and 
the fire are not in God’s hand, but in the sinner’s heart. The 
sinner could not be happy because he hates God and holiness. 
If he could not be attracted to holiness in this world, he cer- 
tainly cannot be in the next, where every passion must be 
intenser in the developed powers of the soul. So the next 
world to the sinner , must be just what his conscience here gives 
forebodings of — a world of sin and agony forever and forever. 
Some, who see this must be so if the sinner is to survive, jump 
to the conclusion that he will be annihilated as by a merciful 
act of God. But this is a mere fancy, and proposed directly 
against God’s revealed word. Eternal 'punishment is not anni- 
hilation. If it be punishment at the moment of annihilating, it 
certainly is not punishment afterward. You cannot punish a 
being who does not exist. Destruction and death do not mean 
annihilation, but the ruin of the soul away from God — its misery 
$nd torture. The view of Dives in hell shows us what the 
destruction and death of the wicked are. 

Is It Annihilation ? — If annihilation were the issue, dying in 
one's sins would not be so awful a thing as Christ held it up to 
the Jews to be. But apart from the Scripture, if God is too 
good (for that is the cant phrase they use) to punish, and there- 
fore will annihilate, why does His goodness allow Him to see 
men suffer such torments as many do in this life? Why does 
He not annihilate all who otherwise would be wretched at their 
birth ? You see what folly all our reasoning a priori about 
God’s ways will land us in! We go back to His word, and 
there see that as the righteous go into everlasting life so the 
wicked go into everlasting punishment. The same word is 
used for both. It is the word of all others that would be 
selected for the idea. No human word can express eternity as 
we approximately conceive it in our minds. The very word 
u eternity,” when etymologically analyzed, only means “ a very 
long time.” That is owing to the weakness of human speech, 
as the offspring of a weak and finite mind. Just as we say 
“ infinite /' that is, u not finite,” which is as near a term as we 
can get for the idea, so we say “ eternal /' that is, “very long,” 
for the idea of that which never ends. This very word 
a never/' which I have just used in the definition, is open to 
the same analysis. So exceedingly foolish is it to argue on 
this subject from the weakness of the word “ eternal.” There 


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is too much readiness in some quarters to correct God’s Word, 
as if little man, who only sees what is just about him, could 
legislate for the universe and for eternity, and determine what 
ought and what ought not to be. The humble heart will search 
God’s Word thoroughly and take what God says, finding there 
a safe foundation which it cannot find in human speculation. 
It is the proud heart that recoils from God’s Word, as it con- 
stantly shows the fearful and deadly character of sin and the 
responsibility of man. It is because of the frightful doom of 
the sinner that the Word of God holds up so clearly the 
future, that man may be warned and fly to the only refuge, even 
to the arms of the Divine Kedeemer. The imprecatory Psalms 
are a part of such warning. They are the inspired foretoken- 
ors of the awful consequences of sin ; and not only are they 
warnings to the wicked, but they are comforts to God’s people 
as showing them the end of the contest against wickedness 
and the triumph of holiness over the foes of God. They are 
terrible in their language, because they treat of terrible truths. 
Scoffing men love to say that they are vindictive and cruel, 
forgetting that they are the utterances of God through His 
prophets against the persistent criminals at His bar, and hence 
all that is cruel is made so by their own guilt. When an earthly 
judge says of a notorious murderer, “ Let him be hanged by 
the neck till he is dead,” is he cruel ? Is he not using the 
language of justice which finds an echo in every conscience ? 
And shall not the Judge of all the earth do right f Shall He 
not pronounce the sentence sin demands ? Or shall He con- 
found sin and righteousness together by a mercy which would 
itself only be weakness and sin, and treat the stout rebel as a 
tender and contrite child? —Howard Crosby: Complete Preacher, 
February , 1878. 

If Men Suffer Now They May Suffer Then.— If men suffer— and 
suffer remedilessly for sin in this life, under the government of 
a merciful and holy God, no satisfactory reason can be assigned 
why they may not suffer in another state of existence, and in 
the face of existing facts, no speculation of uninspired men can 
argue out of the human soul those forebodings of wrath to 
come which the gospel so far from removing, has only con- 
firmed in the great majority of those who accept it. Every 
argument against these natural forbodings, founded upon an 
appeal to the divine Attributes, is equally good against the 


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very existence of the divine government over this world; and 
if carried out to its logical conclusion must lead to the denial 
of the being of God. It is very easy to beg the question in dis- 
pute by passionate appeals to God’s justice and benevolence. 
Assuming that they have all the elements of a righteous judg- 
ment within their grasp, and that they are just as competent as 
God himself to decide what the doom of those who die impeni- 
tent ought to be, men jump at once to the still grosser assump- 
tion that the teaching of the universal conscience of mankind, 
confirmed by what the great majority of Christians have always 
accepted as the plain meaning of Scripture, impeaches the 
divine justice ; and then they ask, with eloquent deprecations, 
“ Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right 1 ?” As though 
some one were endeavoring to prove that the Judge of all the 
earth will do wrong ! 

What the Question to be Decided Is.— The very question to be 
decided is, What in God’s judgment, who alone is competent 
to decide, will be the just doom for incorrigible sinners ? And 
the only answer to that question, aside from Scripture, is found 
in what He does in this world, and what the accusing con- 
science forbodes that He will do in the next. Abraham once 
asked, in a very different spirit from those who quote his 
words, “ Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” And 
the answer was not what the patriarch pleaded for, but the 
storm of fire and brimstone that blotted out the doomed cities 
of the plain. And so all through the history of the world the 
human conscience has recognized and interpreted the fact that 
u the wrath of God has been revealed from heaven against all 
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” And this appeal to 
natural justice as against the everlasting punishment of the 
wicked is still more grossly inconsistent with the very idea of 
such a remedial system as the gospel. “If it be inconsistent 
with divine justice that men should perish for their sins, then 
redemption is not a matter of grace or undeserved mercy. 
Deliverance from an unjust penalty is a matter of justice. 
Nothing, however, is plainer from the teaching of Scripture, 
and nothing is more universally and joyfully acknowledged by 
all Christians than that the whole plan of redemption — the mis- 
sion, the incarnation and the death of the Son of God for the 
salvation of sinners — is a wonderful exhibition of the love of 
God which passes knowledge. But if justice demand that all 


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men shall be saved, then salvation is a matter of justice; and 
all the songs of gratitude and praise from the redeemed, 
whether in heaven or on earth, ought at once to cease.’ 7 — Hodge. 

The Number of the Lost Irrelevant to the Argument.— And you 
will readily see that the question of justice is not in anywise 
affected by the number of the lost. All that has been said about 
the multitudes who may be supposed to have perished, and 
especially all that has been falsely attributed to the orthodox 
doctrine on this point, is a mere befogging of the question. It 
is as truly inconsistent with the divine perfection, and with all 
that makes the character of God attractive, to suppose that He 
would unjustly punish one soul as to suppose that He would 
inflict a similar sentence upon millions. Nor is the appeal to 
divine benevolence more logical or conclusive. As the question 
of numbers is especially irrelevant when applied to the justice, 
so the question of time or duration is irrelevant as regards 
benevolence. If God’s benevolence necessitates the ultimate 
and complete happiness of all, that necessity is just as binding 
now as it ever will be ; for the whole argument is based upon 
the assumption that God’s benevolence, being infinite, must 
have an infinit'e expression — in other words, that He must make 
all men as happy as they can be. But we know that all men 
are not happy here ; nay, we know that no man is as happy as 
he is capable of being. If it be answered that God cannot make 
all men perfectly blessed here consistently with His own per- 
fections and with the interests of the universe, and with the 
very nature of the human soul, that nullifies the whole argu- 
ment ; for who beside God Himself is competent to say that 
the same conditions may not limit the exercise of infinite be- 
nevolence in a future state 1 ? So that the consideration of the 
moral attributes of God as they are illustrated in His providence 
over this world, instead of overturning the doctrine of future 
punishment, is, in fact, one strong reason why it has always 
been believed. The argument from the analogy between the 
constitution and course of nature and the teaching of revealed 
religion on this subject is fully stated by Bishop Butler, and 
never has been answered, except by an utter denial of a divine 
moral government over the universe. — H. J. Vandyke: Complete 
Preacher , April , 1878. 

Scars Do Not Wash Out.— You know very well that a scar will 


'636 


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not wash out, or grow out. Absolutely there is no doubt about 
this. But how vast and fathomlessly practical are the applica- 
tions of the simple truth that scars are inerasable. A two-edge 
sword this, and of keener than Damascus steel. Your dull 
inebriate, who scars his brain by the habit of intemperance, 
thinks, that after his reformation, his nervous system will 
slowly recover all the soundness it once had. But in your 
finger a scar will not grow out ; and in your brain a scar will 
not grow out. Here are scars which were made when my fingers 
were too young to be trusted with edged tools ; but, although 
the particles of my body have been changed many times since 
then, the scars are here, reproduced with the reproduction of 
the particles of the body. Once in seven years we have a new 
body, the books used to say ; once in twelve months, as they 
say now, the particles of our physical system are changed. 
Scars, however, are absolutely unchangeable in the changing 
flesh. We carry into our graves the marks of boyhood’s sports ; 
and this is as true, if you please, of the sports that scar the brain 
as of those that gash the fingers. The most searching blessing 
on good habits, the most penetrating curse on bad, is found in 
the one fact, that the automatic nervous mechanism is such, 
that when a habit, good or bad, is scarred into the nerves and 
brain, the soul pours forth the result of the habit almost spon- 
taneously . — Joseph Gooh: Biology, p. 176. 

What We Discredit Here We Ought to There. — A style of teaching 
that does not work well in this world is adequately discredited 
as a guide to practical truth as to the next world. Law is a 
unit throughout the universe ; and therefore a vivid sight of an 
arc of experience in the seen and temporal, exposes by more 
than a glimpse the course of the whole circle in the unseen and 
eternal. Even in this life we are not outside of the range of 
the irreversibly just and the irreversibly tender laws of the 
nature of things ; and therefore, when age after age puts its seal 
of condemnation on any proposition because it does not work 
well in this world, I have the right, in the name of the unity 
and universality of law, and of the principles that truth works 
well, and that what works well is truth, to brand that proposi- 
tion (that a man may die a kidnapper or a murderer of the 
blackest criminality, and yet be sure to come out right in the 
end) as unscientific, and as therefore not to be trusted in its 
relations to the next world. * * * * I am not 


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quite a full-grown man ; but I am afraid of the power of sin to 
benumb the moral sense, and of the tendency of human nature 
to sin repeatedly when the moral sense is once benumbed. I 
am afraid of the weight of the rope, when I lower myself into 
the jaws of Gehenna; and I believe solemnly that I shall never 
cease to regret any sin which I outgrow. It always will be to 
me a thing that ought not to have been ; and my future will 
have rays of bliss taken off it by every sin I have commit- 
ted; and that will be true, no matter what God does for me. 
He is not likely to change to-morrow, or the day after, the 
natural laws according to which I and all consciences in the 
universe must forever and forever condemn whatever ought 
not to have been. 

A Mathematical Certainty. — Look at the fact, the mathematical 
certainty, that if you deduct from the experience of a man’s 
holiness for awhile, you have deducted something of abso- 
lutely measureless value. You have poisoned him for once. 
Now, this positive evil of diminishing the possible bliss of that 
man is to last some time ! It never will stop its course, will it t 
“There will be no final pain or permanent loss in the universe ?' 
Oh, no 1” I affirm that you cannot take out of human history 
six thousand years, and give them over to blackest sins, or ta 
your least black, without substracting from the bliss of the 
universe ; and that this gap is a part of the record of the past, 
and that you can never fill it up. That gap will exist 

** Till the sun is old, 

And the stars are cold, 

And the leaves of the judgment-book unfold.” 

—Joseph Oook : Orthodoxy, pp. 17-18. 

The Marble and Red-hot Iron Staircases.— Is sin permitted as 
a dragooning process, to eventuate in good at last? No; for 
then sin ought to be ; and conscience affirms that it ought not 
to be. Is sin the necessary means to the greatest good? No I 
for the same reason. Has all sin an ultimately beneficial effect?’ 
Oris every fall a fall up ward? No; for, if this be the case, there is 
reason to doubt whether God is perfectly benevolent.. Let us 
suppose that there stands on the right, here in the universe, a 
marble staircase, and on the left a staircase of red-hot iron. Let 
both ascend to the same height, namely, to a universe from, which: 
all sin shall be eliminated. You go up by the marble staircase * 


638 


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you reach that stage— a universe in which there is no sin. You 
go up by the red-hot iron staircase ; you reach the same Stage — 
a universe in which there is no sin. I beg you to be cautious 
now and here lest you be misled. I warn you that just here is 
the place where you will think I was too rapid, and that you 
did not quite know what you admitted. You say that all 
penalty for sin has a remedial tendency, and that ultimately we 
shall reach a state in which there will be no evil in the uni- 
verse. Men are going up the red-hot iron staircase. This 
represents the path of their suffering for sin. Ultimately, how- 
ever, this staircase, you say, will bring all who go up it into 
freedom from all sin. 

Be mercilessly clear. Could not God take men up the mar- 
ble staircase to that same height? “ Yes, 77 you say. “He is 
ommipotent, omniscient.” Do you admit that? Immense con- 
sequences turn on your being clear just here. God might take 
men up the marble staircase, which represents the path of 
holy free choice, and freedom from the penalties of sin. A 
universe free from sin is what you wish to reach. Men may be 
taken up this marble staircase to that height ; or they may be 
taken up the red-hot iron staircase of suffering to the same 
height. 

A Theory of Evil Which Is Dishonorable. — I affirm that your 
theory of evil is dishonorable to God; for we do know 
that men are going up on the fiery staircase. They 
are suffering remorse ; they are filled with anguish ; and the 
outcome of all that suffering is to be only the attaining of a 
height to which God, according to your theory, might have 
raised them without any suffering at all. Therefore, here are 
useless pains. He who inflicts them cannot be supremely 
benevolent. You might attain the platform which represents 
the absence of sin from the universe by that marble staircase ; 
you are attaining it by the red-hot iron staircase. Why does He 
permit men to ascend to that height by pain, when they might 
ascend to the same height without pain ? If He has no motive 
in that red-hot iron staircase , except to take men up, why does he 
not take men up by the cold marble ? He is not taking men up 
by the cold marble ; he is taking them up the other way. But 
if, as you say, He has no motive but to take men up : if, as 
Theodore Parker said, every fall is a fall upward — how are you 
to prove the divine benevolence, face to face with His prefer- 


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ence for that staircase, when He might have chosen the other f 
Assuredly, the theory that all evil is a dragooning process, and 
that evil is the necessary means to the greatest good, not only 
is false to the intuitions which declare that evil ought not to 
be, but is in conflict with the truth that God is perfect — Joseph 
Cooh: Transcendentalism, p. 185. 

Mind Conscious of a Higher Pain Than the Body.— But the mind 
is conscious of a higher pain than that peculiar to the body ; a 
pain that is peculiar to man as a thinking and emotional being. 
When a man ignorantly receives a false doctrine, or willfully 
pursues a wrong course of action, there is instant conflict and 
confusion between the human and divine currents of thought 
and feeling; and this conflict is accompanied with various 
degrees of uneasiness and pain, even amounting to strong 
agony of soul, reaching in its effects down to the lowest plane 
of action in the human system. This conflict is illustrated in 
the fire that burns between the carbon points, when the posi- 
tive and negative currents of the battery are brought into 
contact. It is only when thus opposed to each other that the 
consuming fire breaks forth. The human mind may have a full 
appreciation of both right and wrong, and no pain result from 
the perfect knowledge: it is only when a current of wrong 
action, either in secret determination or wrong-doing, is arrayed 
against the right that the fires of remorse and disease and pain 
break forth to torment the wrong-doer. That this pain is 
entirely distinct from the pain of the body is most clearly seen 
by observation. We see a person prostrated by wasting dis- 
ease and racked with pain; but this is only where the soul 
touches its earth-born tabernacle, rent and scarred and stained 
in the conflicts of the present imperfect life. In the upper 
regions of thought and feeling the sky is clear ; no clouds of 
doubt throw shadows upon the calm trust whose hand is 
clasped in the hand pierced upon Calvary. No wayward will 
chills the love whose ardent fires mingle with the infinite 
love that breathes its thrilling tides through all the avenues of 
the soul, till joy sits triumphant upon the wasted face, and 
peace, unmingled, heavenly peace, spreads her mantle all over 
the battle ground of mortality whose conflicts and turmoils are 
fast and forever receding from sight. But when soul and spirit 
are separated from the body, the divine action in the second 
plane ceases ; the protoplasmic waters no longer thrill with the 


640 


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impulses of life, and the agony of pain is all ended. The spirit 
and soul, through the obedience of faith, were in union with 
God, possessed of life; and in life there is no sorrow, or pain,, 
or any remorse of conscience ; and henceforth all the con- 
sciousness of the departed soul is of blessed, everlasting rest* 
Lazarus is comforted. 

Conscious Thought Remains to Afflict. — But if, through unbe- 
lieving disobedience, the soul is separated from God, dead in 
sin, although the conflict and pain of the lower planes will 
cease at death, there still remains in the higher plane of con- 
scious thought the feeling sense of wrong doing unatoned, of 
sinful life unforgiven, a will at enmity with God, and all the 
human passions with their negative poles arrayed against the 
divine love and entreaty, and the fires that make hell as cer- 
tainly burn there in the soul as do the fires that flash forth 
between the carbon points of the battery. The latter illustrates 
and verifies the former. The rich man is tormented. 

The Future Body. — But, there is a promise of resurrection ; not 
only of the just, but of the unjust. There will be a body raised 
from the dead for the dead soul to inhabit ; but it will not be 
permeated with immortality. What its constitution will be, we 
are not told. It need not be flesh and blood. God is not bound 
down to one chemical formula for the materialization of a human 
body ; his resources and modes of combination are infinite. The 
human body was not first constituted to be an instrument of 
sin and the medium of unmitigated physical pain and disease. 
God made it to be like his own Body — an instrument of right- 
eousness and the medium through which the soul should ex- 
perience unalloyed physical happiness and ease. When man 
was taken from the tree of life, his physical constitution must 
necessarily have been materially changed and adapted to a state 
of mixed good and evil. In this state, through good conduct r 
ease and comfort may predominate to a good old age ; but 
through the recklessness of sin, disease and pain may predom- 
inate, and the body be soon consumed to the point where soul 
and spirit can no longer use it as an instrument of work, and 
separation must come : the wicked shall not live out half their 
days. Man’s environment here is changeful in its nature. Fire may 
yield him many comforts, or it may torment him with distressing 
agony. Food and drink may give him strength and continued 


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641 


health, or they may produce disease and suffering; and the 
body is so constituted as to be alternately the medium of these 
opposing states of consciousness. 

Fixed Destinies. — But when the soul passes into that state 
where destinies are declared to be eternally fixed ; where “ he 
that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that is righteous, 
let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy 
still ;” when character has become crystallized for good or evil, 
it is not in the least unreasonable that the fiat of the Divine 
Will should materialize an unchangeable body specially fitted 
to be the medium through which to realize in perfection the 
characteristics of either state. Revelation declares the heavenly 
environment to be unchangeable. Then, by the inflexible law 
of polarity, the future environment of the wicked must also 
be unchangeable. In this state of existence we see that a 
human body capable of transmitting alternate sensations of 
pleasure or pain from its environment to the consciousness, is 
invariably overborne by the evil, and finally sinks beneath it to 
the grave. The tree of life is not here to neutralize the phys- 
ical consequences of sin ; else sin in the whole race of man 
might be eternally predominant, and none be saved to eternal 
righteousness and happiness. But the tree of life would be an 
utterly incongruous element in the environment of a sinful 
being ; hence it was reasonable, as well as merciful, that God 
should remove it. But now, good and evil being upon an equal 
footing, each is continually gravitating in the developing char- 
acters of individuals towards an eternal fixity of opposite poles. 
Then it is not in the least strange that a body should be given 
the lost soul, every contact of which with its desolate environ- 
ment will convey such pains to the lower planes of the soul’s 
consciousness, as are but feebly set forth by the intense image 
of the lake that burns with fire and brimstone. 

But is this fire of momentary duration ? Is it something that 
burns up the sinner as ordinary fire burns the dry stubble, and 
then the fire and the consumed sinner vanish together into non- 
existence ? If the teaching of the soul-sleeping destructionist 
be true, this must be the case. In less than two hours from 
the sentence of doom not a vestige of form would be left, and 
the flames of hell-fire would be forever quenched in the scat- 
tered ashes of consumed bodies, souls and spirits. But Christ 
said, “ It is better to enter into life,” into eternal union with 
ol 


642 


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God, “than, having two feet, to be cast into hell, into the fire 
that never shall be quenched ; where their worm dietli not and 
the fire is not quenched. — G. S. Towne: Quoted from Christian 
Standard . 

How the Kingdom of Evil is Inaugurated. — On the day souls 
enter Gehenna-Hades, they will instantly appear worse than 
ever before, as those who enter Paradise-Hades will appear 
better. As the impenitent sinner begins to realize the difficul- 
ties or impossibilities of escape, and as he finds his case a seem- 
ingly hopeless one, then, unchecked by all ordinary restraints, 
which have surrounded and have had their influence upon him 
during his lifetime, the evil in his heart rankling as never 
before for expression, is it too much to suppose, in view of 
the developments actually witnessed during the great crises of 
every-day life, that he will be so far abandoned as most bitterly 
and madly to curse God and His empire ? hTay, more ; is it too 
much to suppose that every offer of divine grace will then be 
spurned, the choice being to remain rather in company with 
those for whose association a life of unrighteousness and 
iniquity have made the abandoned one a fit companion, and 
that the often-repeated seasons of oscillation between gross or 
splendid temptations and a morbid and futile penitence, will 
cease— and defiance alone remain ? 

And, if possible, even more than this. Is it unreasonable to 
infer that the kingdom of the evil one, with all its hideous 
paraphernalia, is to be thus inaugurated; that the forces in 
that man’s nature which would have swayed him religiously, 
will henceforth sway him irreligiously ; that his light will thus be 
turned to darkness ; just as any property, “ overwrought and 
carried to excess, turns into its own contrary ; just as frost, 
raised to its utmost intensity, produces the same sensations as 
fire that the passage-way to his better nature will thus be 
closed up, becoming like the narrow way, so narrow that the 
passage of virtue through it, from sheer difficulty, would be 
like the passage of a camel through a needle’s eye ; that the 
passage-way to his evil nature, on the other hand, will be thus 
broadened, many being the dusty feet of bad things that ever 
afterwards pass up and over that way ; that the soul, seeing 
door after door closing behind it — if we may be allowed the 
expression in this connection — shutting off possible return, will 
come into a state of greater and greater indifference ; of whom 


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643 


it will be said, “careless and seared, the dreary wilds he 
treads.” * * * * It is a frightful condition. 

But in view of Bible representations and the laws of human 
nature, and the frequent ways of Providence, is it unreason- 
able to infer that Ephraim may be inseparably joined to his 
idols ; that the lamps of the soul may be extinguished ; the 
altars overturned; the light and love vanished; the golden 
candlestick removed ; the comely order turned into confusion, 
and the house of prayer into a den of thieves; so that the 
faded glory, the darkness, the disorder, the impropriety, the 
decayed state, shall show nothing henceforth, save that the 
great and good inhabitant is gone forever. — Dr. L. T. Towns- 
end : The Intermediate World, pp. 92-5. 

Perdition Described. — “ The peculiarity in this Christian form 
of reward and retribution is, that it shows all the noble and 
worthy qualities as enlarging and preserving our being, and 
lifting it up into new measures of honor and durable joy; but 
sets forth all disloyalty as contracting the soul, letting down 
its stature, and consigning it at last, in a sort of mental con- 
sumption, poor and dim with fading consciousness, to hell, to 
waste away and perish with the dross and offscouring of the 
world. Hell is thus not so much torment as loss. It has tor- 
ment for a warning ; but, the warning being refused, the tor- 
ment leads to and ends in privation of happiness and extinction 
of power. Compared with the infinite heaven, it is indeed but 
a petty cell, as the valley of Hinnom was to the huge swell of 
the earth. But let us not therefore imagine we can afford to 
smile at it or be inspired by it with no dread. It is large enough 
for our decay. There is room in it for death and annihilation 
of faculty. It has space to provide our souls a grave. It lacks 
not horrid chambers abundant to lodge all who wish to travel 
and take passage that way. If we let the spirit in us run into 
the excitement of unholy passions, into the ruin of falsehood and 
fraud, or into the slow and sure decline of selfishness ; if the 
love of pleasure be suffered to infect us, or licentious profligacy 
to touch us with its plague ; never doubt there will be verge 
enough in hell to receive and awfully secure us. A splendid 
palace goes down, in the fire, into a very little ashes; and 
dwelling and tower are by the stream swept out of human sight 
and admiration into irrecoverable wreck. In what small 
enclosures and imperceptible seclusions is the glory of the 


644 


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world buried! And, ah! how miserably will your heart, if you 
expose it to every flame of ungodly rage, and every disease of 
iniquitous habit, be trampled under foot and thrown carelessly 
away! and even the spiritual nature in you, with the costly 
structures that adorn the world, and the once proud, gay flesh 
of a hundred generations, sink and disappear. From what could 
a discerning spirit more convulsively shrink than from this 
fearful plunge into the drowning waters, to let the Lethe of 
oblivion pass over all its finer feelings ; or from the creeping of 
this deadly sleep, as over the traveler through the snows, to 
fasten on every gracious affection; and then to live on, if life 
continue, in dispossession of inward birthright, under a stupe- 
fying stricture of reason and the heart, with the mark of a dia- 
bolic seizure upon the richest revenue of ‘the soul, deprived of 
the privileges of love and worship and holiness, bereft of what 
is manly, and kept a stranger to all that is divine ; half — and 
O! that far the better half— of our real property alienated, 
fenced off, and blotted out ! Does anybody want a more dread- 
ful idea of hell than that ? From that will not every one flee 
for his life V 7 — Dr. Bartol. 

Beyond the Reach of Moral Influence. — “The most distinguished 
of American philanthrophists,” says Dr. Hedge, in the Chris- 
tian Examiner , u with large experience with human nature and 
reformatory discipline, expressed to us, in a recent conversa- 
tion, the conviction that some natures are beyond the reach of 
moral influence — proof against all discipline — moral incurables. 
What reason to expect a moral revolution in such characters 
hereafter ? If any derived from the nature of the human soul, 
let psychology declare it.” 

“ Our observation does not detect this medicinal quality in 
the penal sufferings of the present life. There is virtue in 
sorrow to educate and perfect the good, but none that we can 
see to reclaim the wicked. It does not appear that punish- 
ment in this world has always the effect, or has in the majority 
of cases the effect, to reform the sinner ; contrariwise, it is 
notorious that men continue to sin and suffer to the day of 
their death. What authority have we for supposing that this 
process is arrested hereafter, or for not supposing that the 
sinner will go on sinning and suffering everlastingly, or till 
evil becomes so predominant in the soul as utterly to quench 
its moral life, and conscious suffering ends in everlasting 


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645 


death? Who shall say that sin, once established, may not 
grow to be supreme and ineradicable — that the habit of trans- 
gression contracted in this world and confirmed by every fresh 
transgression, may not become a necessity of nature, strong as 
fate and deep as life ?” 

Less Adapted to Nourish Good Seed. — A distinguished Eadical 
writer, in the Monthly Religious Magazine of May, 1867, says : 

“ So with human nature. It is less and less adapted, with 
every year of neglect, to receive and nourish the seeds of 
virtue. Vices, whose germs were caught from the passing air 
—who can tell where they came from, any more than what 
sows the myriad weeds of the field? — spiingup in its soil. The 
freshness and wealth of feeling which belong to childhood are 
dried up. The roots of coarse and bitter passions thrid it 
through and through, and it is trodden down and hardened by 
the long tramp of a thousand worldly cares. Yea, it is a terri- 
ble fact that the higher and richer a man’s opportunities are, 
the more hardening and deadening, if not improved aright, is 
their influence on the character. It is in the midst of Christian 
lands, in the full light of the Gospel, that we find the worst 
crimes, the most hardened, unrepentant criminals. The world 
has never had such irreversible sceptics and unbelievers as some 
of the men who stood in the very presence of Christ, seeing 
His miracles, hearing with their own ears His words of wisdom. 
The souls which blaspheme against the Holy Ghost beyond all 
hope of forgiveness, are the ones which have had the Spirit of 
God come so near, so direct before them, as to be conscious of 
Him as a living person. You cannot increase a sinner’s means 
of salvation without increasing, at the same time, and in the 
same things, his means of deeper damnation. The Gospel 
which is not a savor of life unto life, is, by its very nature, a 
savor of death unto death. And unless the laws of a man’s 
being are entirely changed, increasing its opportunities, going 
to that world where it will know more of truth and duty, and 
the light of God’s Spirit, instead of making the soul sure of 
repentance, may only furnish it with the means of being more 
skeptical, more flinty, more blaspheming.” 

What the Last Results of Punishment May Be.— Says the 
editor of this same magazine, in an earlier issue, July, 1861: 

“ The last results of punishment and suffering in the future 
may be to bring evil beings into external conformity with such 


646 


RETRIBUTION. 


external privileges as they may be fitted to enjoy, while sin has 
forever closed the internal mind against the renewing grace 
and the bliss of angels. It may be one of the terrible results of 
confirmed and persevering wickedness, that the transgressor is 
degraded to a lower plane of existence, and can only live there 
forever.” 

Eating the Fruit of Their Own Ways. — “ They shall eat the fruit 
of their own ways, and be filled with their own devices.” This 
life is the springtime of our immortal being; the harvest is 
eternity. Harvest is not the time for sowing ; we shall reap 
then what we sow now. This law is of God ; and it is like the 
laws by which He regulates all nature. If a man sows tares or 
thistles in his field in spring, it is probable that a bitter regret 
will seize upon him in the harvest day. He will loathe the 
worthless crop that he gets to fill his bosom ; but he cannot, by 
a sudden and energetic wish, change all the laws of nature, and 
make his field wave with ripened grain. As certainly as a 
husbandman in harvest reaps only what he sowed in spring, 
shall they who in life sow sin, reap wrath in the judgment. 
The provisions of his covenant are steadfast as the laws of his 
world. His promises are sure as the ordinances of heaven, 
and his threatenings, too. 

It is true that God destroys His enemies ; but it is also true that 
they destroy themselves. They throw themselves into the fire, 
and by His laws they are burned. He has laws that are everlast- 
ing and unchangeable ; and He has not hidden them from men. 
He has plainly declared them. “ The soul that sinneth, it shall 
die.” Those who cast themselves on revealed wrath are their 
own destroyers. These outstretched hands of His are clear of a 
sinner’s blood. 

Judgment an Exact Answer to Disobedience.— Judgment will be 
an exact answer to disobedience, as fruit answers the seed, or 
an echo the sound. The strictness of retribution at last will 
correspond to the freeness of mercy now. There would be no 
glory in God’s present compassion, if it had not the full terror 
of immutable justice behind it to lean upon. Even the divine 
long-suffering would lose its loveliness if it did not stand in 
front of the divine wrath. You cannot paint an angel upon 
light ; so mercy could not be represented — mercy could not be, 
unless there were judgment without mercy, a ground of deep 
darkness lying beneath, to sustain and reveal it. That there 


RETRIBUTION. 


647 


may be a day of grace pushed forward within the reach of men 
on earth, there must be a throne of judgment as its base in 
eternity. When the day of grace is past, the throne of judg- 
ment stands alone, and the impenitent must meet it. 

The anguish comes first within the conscience of the ungodly, 
when the life course is drawing near its close. Desolation comes 
like a whirlwind. The body is drooping. The grave is opening. 
The judgment is preparing. He has no righteousness and no 
hope. Behold now the prospect before the immortal, when 
death, like a rising wave, has blotted out the beams of mercy 
that lingered to the last. It is now the blackness of darkness. 
Hope, that flickered long, has gone out at length. And how 
rigidly strict must the retribution be ! They would not hear 
God in the day of his mercy; in the day of vengeance God will 
not hear them. They laughed at His threatenings ; He will mock 
their cry. This reciprocity is the law of his kingdom. It cannot 
be changed. — William Arnot : Laws from Heaven for Life on 
Earth , pp. 63-4. 

Reaping What One Sows. — He is looking forward to a harvest 
wherein he may reap the fruit of his present anticipations. 
And he shall reap it. He shall have his indulgence. He shall 
enj oy his guilty rapture. He shall have his unhallowed triumph, 
and the boon companions of his pleasures shall award him the 
meed of their applause. He has sown the seed ; and in fair 
requital he shall have his harvest. It is all fair. He shall 
enjoy. But tarry awhile. The law hath yet another hold upon 
him. This deep law of the whole universe goes further. He 
has sown to the flesh and of the flesh he has reaped pleasure ; 
he has sown to the flesh and of the flesh he shall reap corrup- 
tion. That is, in his case, the ruin of the soul. It is an awful 
thing to see a soul in ruins ; like a temple which once was fair 
and noble, but now lies overthrown, matted with ivy, weeds and 
tangled briars, among which things noisome crawl and live. He 
shall reap the harvest of disappointment — the harvest of bitter, 
useless remorse. The crime of sense is avenged by sense, 
which wears by time. He shall have the worm that gnaws, 
and the fire that is not quenched. He shall reap the fruit of 
long-indulged desires, which have become tyrannous at last, 
and constitute him his own tormentor. His harvest is a soul in 
flames, and the tongue that no drop can cool. Passions that 
burn, and appetites that crave, when the power of enjoyment 


648 


RETRIBUTION. 


is gone. He has sowed to the flesh. “God is not mocked.” 
The man reaps. — F. W. Robertson : Vol. 1st, p. 251. 

True Meaning of Hell. — The true meaning of hell, is a state of 
painful opposition to the will of God, misadjustment of personal 
constitution with universal order, or the rightful conditions of 
being. * * * Hell p a i n the senses, slavery in 

the will, contradiction or confusion in the intellect, remorse or 
vain aspiration in the conscience, disproportion or ugliness in 
the imagination, doubt, fear and hate in the heart. There is a 
hell of remorse, forever re-treading the path of ruined yester- 
days. There is a hell of loss, whose occupant stands gazing on 
the melancholy might-have-been transmuted now into a relent- 
less nevermore. Every sinner has a hell as original and idiosyn- 
cratic as his soul and its contents. * * * * * 

Hell being the consciousness of a soul in which private will is 
antagonistic to some relation of universal law, its keenness and 
extent, in every instance, must be measured by the variations 
of this antagonism. * * * * The elements of 

hell are pain, slavery, imprisonment, rebellion, forced exertion, 
forced inaction, shame, fear, self-condemnation, social condem- 
nation, universal condemnation, aimlessness and despair. Envy 
is the very blast that blows the forge of hell. It sets its victim 
in painful antagonism with all good not his own, actually turn- 
ing it into evil. * * * * Ignorance, pride, false- 

hood and hate are the four master-keys to the gates of hell — 
keys which sinners are ever unwittingly using to let themselves 
in, and then to lock the bolts behind. — W . R. Alger : History of 
the Doctrine of a Future Life 3 pp. 706-11. 

Nothing Can Exorcise the Pang of Remorse.— There is no power 
in holy men, nor charm in prayer — nor purifying form of peni- 
tence — nor outward look — nor fast — nor agony — nor, greater 
than all these, the innate tortures of that deep despair, which 
is remorse without the fear of hell, but, all in all, sufficient to 
itself would make a hell of heaven — can exorcise from out the 
unbounded spirit, the quick sense of its own sins, wrongs, suf- 
ferance, and revenge upon itself; there is no future pang can 
deal that justice on the self-condemned he deals on his own 
soul. — Byron : Manfred , Act 3d. 

No Escape.— Me miserable! which way shall I fly infinite 
wrath, and infinite despair? Which way I fly is Hell, myself am 


RETRIBUTIOIt. 


649 


Hell; and in the lowest deep a lower deep still threatening to 
devour me opens wide, to which the Hell I suffer seems a 
Heaven. — Milton. 

Sense of Right Cleaves to Us. — A sense of duty pursues us 
ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves 
the wings of the morning and dwell in the utmost parts of the 
seas, duty performed, or duty violated, is still with us, for our 
happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover 
us, in the darkness as in the light, our obligations are yet with 
us. We cannot escape their power, nor fly from their presence. 
They are with us in this life, will be with us at its close ; and in 
that scene of inconceivable solemnity, which lies yet farther 
onward— we shall still find ourselves surrounded by the con- 
sciousness of duty, to pain us, wherever it has been violated, 
and to console us so far as God may have given us grace to 
perform it. — Webster : Trial of J. F. Knapp. 

Penalties are hut Natural Results.— The announcement of the 
sanctions of the moral law on the part of the Sovereign of the 
universe, is, we believe, but a statement of a law of nature. The 
law of a tree, a fish, a bird, a man, is that formula which express- 
es the conditions of its being, development, and health. When 
a parent enjoins upon his child wholesome food, and threatens 
disease as a consequence of disobedience, he does not lay down 
an artificial law, but describes a natural one. So when God 
proclaims the moral law, he lays down the conditions of spiritual 
life, and when he annexes the penalty he informs us of the 
natural results of violating these conditions. If a son, without 
any instruction, prohibition, or threat of his father, put himself 
in a dark cellar, drink stagnant water, eat putrescent food, and 
instead of walking the green earth and joining the company of 
his fellows, chain himself to a bolt, he must soon suffer disease, 
derangement, death ; so if, without any prohibition from Heaven, 
he hide upon the dark mountains of unbelief, supply his soul 
with lies, and sin as with a cart-rope, he must suffer moral 
disease and death. The commands of God and the laws of 
nature coincide. He does not inflict tortures upon the lost, but 
He does banish them from his presence and the glory of His 
power ; even as a father, in order to secure the peace and pro- 
tection of his household, bids the prodigal son, who has been 
long borne with, reproved, admonished, disciplined in vain to 
leave the paternal roof, for which he has rendered himself both 


650 


RETRIBUTION. 


unworthy and unfit. The term translated punishment, in the 
text quoted from the Savior, means cutting off, that is, from 
life. “ Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone.” No more 
terrific words can be spoken in heaven or earth or hell, than 
when God says to the sinner, “ Let him alone.” 

The Philosophy of Divine Banishment.— This banishment from 
God itself takes place, we may suppose, not by force of an 
armed police, but by the silent, invisible workings of natural 
and necessary law. The means appointed by God for our hap- 
piness, when perverted, produce our woe. The eye, when abused 
and blood-shot, shuns even the most charming landscape; the 
ear, pierced until it is inflamed, shrinks from the finest harmony ; 
the tongue, diseased, loathes the most delicious sweets; the 
limbs, rheumatic, cannot be drawn to the most pleasurable and 
healthful exercise. It is so with the soul. The understanding, 
which was made to apprehend and adore God, when long trained 
to turn away from His attributes and relations, and ignore his 
claims, hides from him as guilty Adam in the Garden; the affec- 
tions, though formed to love God, after having been long trained 
to hate Him, are incapable of normal action ; the will, designed 
to run in the groove of God’s law, after having long been con- 
fined to ruts, which run athwart it, cannot run in its proper 
path. Hence, the lost soul must regard the company, the em- 
ployments, the enjoyments of heaven as irksome, oppressive, 
torturing. It would instinctively run from the Father so deeply 
wronged, and his faithful children, so grossly maligned and bit- 
terly reviled. ****** 

No Reversion of Laws in the Future.— Nor can we expect God 
to reverse His laws in order to save the sinner from these con- 
sequences. To save the man who leaps from a precipice, 
should gravitation be suspended, and the universe ruined; or 
should a special intervention occur, and thus uncertainty as to 
the results of our actions be introduced? To save the lost, 
should sin be made the law of life, righteousness the law of 
death, and heaven and hell change places, or be mingled? 
Would this be justice to the righteous, or would it be advisa- 
ble to unsettle all the moral laws, and throw uncertainty over 
all the moral issues of the universe? The law of God, there- 
fore, is not the conflict of will with will, but of wisdom with 
folly, knowledge with ignorance, right with wrong— the an- 


RETRIBUTION. 


651 


nouncement out of parental love ; of the conditions of spiritual 
life, happiness, immortality. The punishment of sin, therefore, 
may be contemplated, not as the overflowings of wrath, but 
the outworkings of natural law, coincident with the judgment 

of infinite righteousness Edward Thomson , D.D., L.L.D.: 

“Evidences of Revealed Religion/ 9 pp. 140-3. 

Wonderful Mercy of God. — From the Bible I take it that the 
redeemed of earth will somehow get a little nearer to the great 
white throne than any other inhabitants of that country. It 
seems to me our relationship is a little different, in the won- 
derful mercy of God. I think the time will come when the 
redeemed who have been steadfast, and maintained their fealty 
to God and to the great Captain of their salvation, rising from 
their dusty graves, and called up into that eternal world, will 
hear him say to Gabriel, Michael, and all the host of heaven, 
u Fall back ! fall back ! ” And he that sitteth upon the throne, 
and is King of kings and Lord of lords, will exclaim, “ Come, 
ye blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you 
from the foundation of the world.’ 7 It seems to me we shall 
get a little nearer; that there will be a kind of relationship 
which angels will not know anything about; that there will be 
a feeling of love, gratitude and adoration in the redeemed host 
that those who kept their first estate will not feel as we do. 
How we honor those who have stood up like men when it 
required men to stand ! Some of us older ones can remember 
having met, in other days, the remnant of the grand old army 
of ’76. I have seen a few of them. Bude, poor, uncultivated 
men they were ; but how we honored them, and loved to do 
them reverence! How even the little bright-eyed boys and 
girls would look slyly up out of the Corners of their eyes amidst 
their curls when an old Revolutionary soldier passed, and 
whispered to each other, u He is an old Revolutionary soldier.” 
I like that; I think it is right, and I think God likes it. — 
Bishop Ames. 

The Punishment Incurred. — The laws of the universe are not 
more certain in their operation, than the punishment of sin. 
The same goodness that determines the rewards of virtue, 
ordains the retribution and shall necessitate the doom of vice. 
God would treat his universe as ill, were he not to punish sin, 
as he would were he not to reward piety — and much more so, 
for the one would be a positive and the other but a negative 


652 


RETRIBUTION. 


evil. The one would license disorder while the other would be 
merely to withhold the recompense of virtue. — H. B. Bascom , 
D,D., L.L.D.: Sermons , Vol. 160-1. 

Righteousness Its Own Reward.— Great is the consciousness of 
right. Sweet is the answer of a good conscience. He who 
pays his whole-hearted homage to Truth and Duty — who swears 
his life-long fealty on their altars, and rises up a Nazarite 
consecrated to their holy service — is not with out his solace and 
enjoyment, when, to the eyes of others, he seems the most 
lonely and miserable. He breathes an atmosphere which the 
multitude know not of— “a serene heaven which they cannot 
discern rests over him, glorious in its purity and stillness.” 
Nor is he altogether without kindly human sympathies. All 
generous and earnest hearts which are brought in contact with 
his own beat evenly with it. All that is good and truthful and 
lovely in man, whenever and wherever it truly recognizes him, 
must sooner or later acknowledge his claim to love and rever- 
ence. His faith overcomes all things. The future unrolls itself 
before him, with its waving harvest-fields springing up from 
the seed he is scattering; and he looks forward to the close of 
life with the calm confidence of one who feels that he has not 
lived idle and useless ; but with hopeful heart and strong arm 
has labored with God and nature for the Best. 

And not in vain. In the economy of God, no effort, how- 
ever small, put forth for the right cause, fails of its effect. No 
voice, however feeble, lifted up for Truth, ever dies amidst the 
confused noises of Time. Through discords of Sin and Sorrow, 
Pain and Wrong, it rises in deathless melody, whose notes of 
wailing are hereafter to be changed to those of triumph, as they 
blend with the Great Harmony of a reconciled universe. — J. G, 
Whittier, 


Index to Authors 


PAGE. 

Adams, John 447, 448 

Adams, Samuel 446 

Adams, J. Q 446 

Alexander, A 438 

Alexander, J. W 570 

Ames, Bishop 651 

Agassiz, Louis, 76, 89, 132, 139, 289 
Argyll, Duke of, 84, 119, 120, 121, 
163, 290 

Augustine 87, 224 

Aristotle .62, 91, 480 

Atkinson 116 

Alger, W. R 617, 648 

Anaximines 618 

Aristoxenus 620 

Aeschyhis 622 

Adison, Joseph, 256, 284, 457, 525, 624 

Arnold, Thomas 326, 342 

Auberlen .275 

Arnot, William 627, 646 

Alshech, Rabbi 366 

Arnold, Matthew 378, 379 

Andrews, S. J 502 

Bacon, Lord Francis, 162, 253, 492 

Bacon, Roger .211 

Bacon, Leonard 385 

Barker, Joseph 501 

Bascom, H. B 651 

Baur, Ferdinand C., 378, 414, 419, 421 

Bartol, Dr 643 

Bailey, Philip James 300 

Baxter, Richard...... 284,306 

Barnes, Albert 203, 520 

Beecher, H. W., 43,44,165,244,269, 
352, 443, 549, 573 

Bentley 35, 81, 255 

Berosus 330,370 

Bertholdt 370 

Bernard 422 

Bancroft, George .....444 


PAGE. 

Blackie, J. Stuart, 115, 309, 459, 578 
Bowne, Borden P., 30, 87, 93, 94, 
106, 259, 490, 613 * 

Browne, Sir Thomas 35, 249, 284 

Brooke, Stapford 557 

Braden, Clark, 37, 124, 461, 478, 558 

Boardman, G. D 53, 609 

Brewster, Sir David 211 

Browne, E. Harold 318 

Boyle 494 

Bushnell, Horace, 48, 49, 159, 184, 
188, 282, 455, 521, 546, 548 

Burr, Dr 27, 37 

Burnet, Thomas 304 

Buckle, Thomas 150 

Burke, Edmund 448, 492, 525 

Bunsen, Chevalier 448 

Byron, Lord 306, 491, 648 

Campbell, Dr. George 427 

Campbell, A., 36, 281,428, 430, 459, 
568, 571 

Carlyle, T., 140, 299, 448, 489, 494, 525 

Celsus. 387 

Cicero 299 

Channing, W. E., 47, 282, 314, 516, 
549 

Christopher, Dr. H 36, 257 

Carpenter, Dr. W. B 45, 293, 621 

Charnock, Stephen, 46, 248, 262, 492 
Chalmers, Thomas, 156, 178,239, 415, 
423, 628 

Christlieb, Theodore, 173, 196, 419, 


421,453, 521, 581,614 

Chesterfield, Lord 492 

Chubb 513 

Church and Science 145 

Clay, Henry 447 

Clement 424 

Clarke, James Freeman 27, 323 

Cob be, Frances Power 526 

Conybeare and Howson 565 


dcliv 


INDEX TO AUTHORS. 


PAGE. 

Cook, Joseph, 24, 25, 604, 606, 622 


635, 636, 637 

Cousin, Victor 26, 307 

Coleridge, S. T 92, 448 

Cowper, William 250 

Cook, Cannon 333, 338 

Collier, Jeremy 493 

Cuvier 86 

Crosby, Dr. Howard 92, 172, 630 

Critias 618 

Curtis, Dr. Samuel Ives, 330, 480, 
481 

Dana, Prof. J. D 78, 286 


Darwin, Charles, 103, 120, 136, 137, 
140 

Dawson, Principal J. W., 73, 75, 
113, 125, 148, 166, 251, 290 


Davy, Sir Humphrey 623 

Descartes 35 

Dewey, Orville 257, 279, 281, 314 

Dickens, Charles 310 

Diderot, Denis 448 

Doremus, Prof. 99 

Draper, Prof. J. W 146 

Dungan, D. R 331 

Ebers 480 

Espin, T. E 341 

Errett, Isaac, 240, 274, 276, 280, 296, 
596 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo 300, 623 

Erskine, Lord 254 

Ewald 342 

Eusebius 381, 390 

Everett, Edward 443 

Farrar, F. W 417, 502, 538, 563 

Farrar, A. S 451 

Fichte 22, 620 

Fisher, G. P 201, 392, 401, 402 

Flint, Robert 174 

Froude, James Anthony. ..202, 390, 
395 

Foster, John 312, 460 

Franklin, Benjamin 446, 487 

Franklin, Benjamin, Elder 497 

Gralton, Francis 171 

Garbett, Prof. 24 



PAGE, 

Geikie, Cunningham 

.531, 537 

Goethe 301, 309, 447, 

526, 620 

Goodwin, H. M 

..537 

Gibbon, Edward 487, 

488, 577 

Gibson, Dr 

482 

Globe-Democrat 

485 

Graduate, A 

533 

Gray, Asa 

136 

Green, William Henry 

369 

Green leaf, Simon 

.374, 375 

Grant, U. S 

447 

Guizot, M 

518 

Guthrie, Dr 

272 

Guyot, A 

,.77, 150 

Hanna, Dr 

539 

Harris, John 

552 

Harrison, William Henry. 

446 

Hall, A. Wilford 

,.81, 607 

Haeckel.. 

137 

Hartenstein 

620 

Hall, Robert 

.253, 493 

Hale, Sir Matthew 

255 

Haley, J. W 

325 

Havernich 

370 

Hackett, Dr 

416 

Hegel 

22 

Henry, Joseph 

86 

Herschel, Sir John 

157 

Heraclitus 


Herbart 

620 

Hedge, Dr 

644 

Hengstenberg 


Henry, Patrick 

........447 

Hinsdale, B. A 

544 

Hitchcock, Dr 


Hooker 

28 

Holmes, O. W 

..118, 302 

Holland, J. G 

..237, 303 

Horne, T. H 

588 

Hodge, Charles 

634 

Hogarth 

469 

Hughes, Thomas 

533 

Huxley, Thomas 105 

, 439, 495 

Hutton, Richard Holt 


Hugo, Victor 

305 

Huna, Rabbi 



INDEX OF AUTHORS, 


dclv 


Hume, David 



PAGE 

Hyacinthe, Pere 




Irenseus 


..379, 

, 401 

Ingersoll, R. G 464, 

,482, 

i 485, 

r 495 

Jackson, Andrew 




Jay, Chief Justice 




Janes, Bishop 




Jacobi 




Jerome 



, 390 

Jefferson, Thomas 



, 448 

Jenvns, Soame 




Josephus 


. 479, 

, 526 

Jowett, Prof 




Johnson, Dr. Samuel.. 



,.613 

Johnson, Franklin 

.332, 

, 338, 

, 341 

Jones, Prof. A. B 



..251 

Julian 



..527 

Keim 




Kent, Chancellor 




Kogel, Rudolph 



.531 

Kingsley, Charles 




Krummacher 




Kurtz 

,..74, 

333, 

335 

Knobel 




Kuenen, Dr 



.369 

Lange 



.494 

Range, J. P 61 

, 91, 

268, 

323 

LaPlace 



.159 

Lamb, Charles 




Leathes, Stanley 



..285 

Reeky, W. H 135, 

154, 

207, 

215, 

488, 553, 554, 555 




Reibnitz 


..26, 

620 

Rewis, Taylor 

....6C 

>, 68, 

184 

Re Conte 


.170, 

171 

Reucippus 



.618 

Rengerke 



.370 

Riddon, H. P 

.190, 

529, 

544 

Rittre, M 



.162 

Rocke, John 26, 

447, 

457, 

553 

Ronginus 



...80 

Royola, Ignatius 



.223 

Ron don Editor 



.235 

Rongfellow, H. W 



.285 

Rowell, James Russell 



.309 

Rotze, Hermann 



.103 

Rongan, George W 



.404 

Mansel, Henry R 

.34, 

147, 

210 

242, 243, 244 




Martineau, Dr. James. 



. 46 

Macauley, T. B 


220, 

525 


PAGE. 

Marsh, G. P 290 

Malte, Brun ..355 

Martyr, Justin 415 

Magill, William 440, 441 

Maillet, M 481 

Maurice, F. D 451 

McCosh, Dr. James 34, 117, 150, 

228, 231, 376 

Mcllvaine, Bishop 80 

McCaul, A 88, 366 

McGarvey, J, W 423 

McKnight 432 

Mendelssohn 620 

Melancthon 275 

Menant, M 371 

Miller, Hugh 28, 79, 135, 159, 315 

Mill, John Stuart 260, 353 

Milton, John 278, 304, 648 

Milman, Dean 339 

Mivart, St. G 33, 85, 295 

Mitchell, O. M 87 

Micheelis 481 

Mozley, J. B 175, 309, 327, 349 

Moleschott 616 

Montaigne 250, 311 

Monod, Adolphe 324 

Monthly Religious Magazine .... 645 

Moore, Thomas 459 

Muller, F. Max 497, 542 

Muller, Julius 542 

Murphy, Dr. J. G., 53, 57, 58, 64, 
264, 266, 324, 333, 334, 336 
Muratori 380 

Napoleon 503 

Neander, A 320, 524, 551 

Newton, Isaac 92, 447, 494 

Niebuhr 480 

Norton, Andrews, 385, 391, 395, 562 

Owen, Prof 84, 120 

Oken, Prof 119 

Origen * 379, 390 

Paley, Dr., 108, 113, 114, 115, 117, 
118, 435 

Paulus, Dr 197 

Pascal 299, 344, 496 

Papias . 390 

Patterson, Robert 498, 499, 500 

Parker, Theodore, 29, 444, 448, 493, 
523 

Parker, Dr. Joseph, 50, 321, 443, 517 
Pecaut 526 


Pearson, Thomas 21, 22, 449, 450 


/ 


dclvi 


INDEX OF AUTHORS. 


s 


PAGE 


PAGE. 


Peabody, A. P 167, 410 

Perowne, J. J. S 602 

Penn, William 307 

Plato 62, 307, 528, 622 

Pliny 527 

Plutarch ...491 

Porphyry 527 

Powers, Fred. Perry 469 

Poole, R. S 481 

Pressense, E. De., 161, 274, 516, 546 

Procter, Alex 85, 533 

Pollok, Robert 306 

Quatrefages, Prof 288 

Haleigh, Sir Walter 35, 254 

Rawlinson, George 345, 346 

Richardson, R 343 


Richter, Jean Paul, 255, 285, 302 
494, 525 

Rinan, Ernest, 162, 202, 377, 410 
414, 513, 514 

Rosenmuller 480 

Robertson, F. W., 36, 51, 277, 313 
455, 540, 572, 626, 647 

Rogers, Henry 328, 347, 348, 561 

Rousseau... 35, 448, 455, 500, 511, 512 


Rush, Benjamin 446 

Ruskin, John 158, 302 

Ruette 615 

Ryder, Dr 476 

Schaff, Philip 404, 526, 565 

Schelling 22 

Schleirmacher 405, 584 

Schlegel 617 

Schenkel 586 

Schiller 300 

Scott, Sir Walter 447 

Scott, Laurence W 387 

Seeley, Prof 515, 529 

Seelye, J. H 555, 566 

Sedgwick 157 

Seneca 312 

Seward, Wm. H 448 

Seetzen 480 

Sliakspeare, Wm 301, 302 

Sherlock, Wm 625 

Smith, George C 330 

Smith, Dr. Pye 90 

Smith, Goldwin 611, 612 

Socrates 27, 90, 107, 623 

South, Robert.: 254, 285, 3<'4 

Southey, Robert 284 

Stanley, Dean 342, 350, 480 

Sterne, Lawrence 303 

Steele, Sir Richard 458, 526 

Spurgeon, Charles H 570 


Spinoza 22 

Spencer, Herbert, 31, 34, 151, 168, 
494 496 

Strauss 23, 199, 523, 586 

Stirling, Prof 125 

Stuart, Moses 326 

Stowe, Calvin E 343 

Swing, David 464 

Swazey, Arthur 482 

Tacitus 479, 527 

Talmage, T. DeWitt... 285, 442, 542 

Taylor, Isaac 232, 344, 438 

Taylor, Jeremy 283 

Tayler, J. J 40, 247, 278, 314 

Thomson, Sir Wm 129, 132 

Thomson, Bishop Edward 649 

Thomson, Dr. J. P., 77, 90, 293, 295, 
339 

Thales 618 

Tholuck 298 

Thackeray, Wm. M 310 

Tischendorf 447 

Towne, C. S 639 

Townsend, Dr. L, T 642 

French, R. C 179, 396, 399 

Tyndall, John, 138, 139, 140, 150, 
494, 495 

Underwood, B. F., 227, 244, 380, 461 

Vandyke, H. J 633 

Victoria, Queen 448 

Virchow 138 

Vogt, Carl 137 

Volney, Count 354 

Walker, J. B 530 

Wayland, Francis 256 

Watts, Dr. Isaac 283 

Wallace, Alfred 296 

Watson, Bishop 344, 449 

Washington, George 446 

Webster, Noah 217 

Webster, Daniel, 308, 445, 447, 649 


Whittier, J. G 254, 652 

Whipple, Bishop 445 

Winchell, Alex 77, 124, 142, 143 

Wilson, Bishop 381, 454 

Westcott, B. F., 316, 317, 389, 392. 
394, 406, 437, 579, 600 

Weizsacker 582 

Wordsworth, William 304 

Young, John 529 

Young, Edward 304 










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